Answerphones and Adverts (living in the virtual world)
17 May 2017
Today I say goodbye to Facebook. It has become addictive, confrontational, full of people who just want to argue. “Ramblings of a mad man” someone said to me today because I happened to put up a post about ATOS. It seems I am now fully invisible to them all, a real shock as I only started talking about my disability a couple of weeks ago.
So it’s goodbye.
Life is too short and too precious to me now to be worrying about what you had for breakfast. At 5 tonight this gets deleted, so say your goodbyes and send me a yellow dot with a face on it because half of you won’t even read this and I cannot be arsed with any of it anymore.
I put that on my Facebook today to see what would happen. I was online this morning and nearly got into a new argument about yet another coffee shop to add to our neighbourhood. The usual questions started to be asked. Is it buggy friendly? do they have highchairs? How's the wi/fi? Is that what the world has come to now?
Take a walk in Peckham Rye on a Sunday morning to see just what I'm talking about. Sitting in rows outside the full-up coffee shops drinking overpriced drinks and eating expensive cake. I love it just as much but it’s getting silly.
Estate agents, hairdressers, chicken shops and coffee bars. Is that all we want anymore? I am trying and failing quite badly to start something called IT's Easy so forgive me as I try to give you a history lesson.
When I left school the calculator and BBC Micro were just being introduced. For those of you that don’t know what a BBC Micro is look it up. How are you going to do that? Online of course. But there are a lot of people out there that think online is the washing hung up by little wooden pegs in the garden. Some old people have no idea about computers and a lot don’t want to know. But now they are figuring out that they do in fact need to know.
Social media can be a force for good but after comments made this morning I decided “Let’s see who your real friends are”. I have started to post a lot on Scope and other disabled websites about what I am trying to do and offered help at local libraries and community centres. Sending emails and receiving nothing back. “Try Age Concern in Catford” one helpful person said. So I did. It’s for people over 60. The closest one for over 50's is in another borough.
Local libraries are run by volunteers who have old people showing old people how to write an email and research their family history, on outdated computers, while the buggy brigade sing nursery rhymes to their children in a large get together in the background. Whatever happened to silence in the library? Progress.
Most of the IT classes come out of a text book written by older people and that is what they have learnt to teach people. The ECDL course for one on how to use Microsoft Word! They have no idea of the power they have in their hands when they open their laptops and don’t read about or have any interest in what it can do. They go through the motions and know certain things. Repetition: open a browser, type in what they want, click on a link. You think I’m knocking them, well I am not. I have great respect for anyone who gets out there and tries to pass on knowledge to others.
I know how hard it is to try and teach someone. But if you make it as simple as it can possibly be how can that be a bad thing? But unfortunately as most tutors out there earning £25 an hour employed by the system see me as a threat to their wages I am ignored. I offed to volunteer and only a couple of people have responded. We shouldn’t be a society that discriminates against others but that’s what life is like all over the country. When the internet took off, old people thought it was the latest fad that wouldn't last. Sadly those same people are left behind. Not so many left now but they fought for all of us and this is how we repay them. Or we would if they could get through to anyone. It’s all online now!
IT's Easy, my invention, shows people how to make that world easy. To take away the fear of using a computer, tablet or phone. I know how to get a web page and I show them how. Go to Windows Explorer, type in an address and then follow the links. Do you think that is the right way to show people? My way: 2 taps on the mouse. On a 50 inch monitor which everyone has at home. It’s called a television. Plug your laptop into the TV and they can see. Set it up right and a couple of weeks tutoring and practice and away they go. Within a few weeks they are telling me things I didn’t know you could do. That’s how it should be. Simple stupid.
My life now is hospital appointments, doctors, sleep clinic, physiotherapy, stress anxiety and teaching those who will listen. I haven't got time for social arguments with people I hardly know. So as for my quitting Facebook, if you’re reading this, I'm not really, but it proves who my real friends are.
The most important thing in life is to get out and help others. Be nice to people and fight the injustice that is all around us. For people who want showing how easy a computer can be. I might give you a few lessons and set up your machine. Even now I'm a cripple I still have uses.
17 May 2017
Today I say goodbye to Facebook. It has become addictive, confrontational, full of people who just want to argue. “Ramblings of a mad man” someone said to me today because I happened to put up a post about ATOS. It seems I am now fully invisible to them all, a real shock as I only started talking about my disability a couple of weeks ago.
So it’s goodbye.
Life is too short and too precious to me now to be worrying about what you had for breakfast. At 5 tonight this gets deleted, so say your goodbyes and send me a yellow dot with a face on it because half of you won’t even read this and I cannot be arsed with any of it anymore.
I put that on my Facebook today to see what would happen. I was online this morning and nearly got into a new argument about yet another coffee shop to add to our neighbourhood. The usual questions started to be asked. Is it buggy friendly? do they have highchairs? How's the wi/fi? Is that what the world has come to now?
Take a walk in Peckham Rye on a Sunday morning to see just what I'm talking about. Sitting in rows outside the full-up coffee shops drinking overpriced drinks and eating expensive cake. I love it just as much but it’s getting silly.
Estate agents, hairdressers, chicken shops and coffee bars. Is that all we want anymore? I am trying and failing quite badly to start something called IT's Easy so forgive me as I try to give you a history lesson.
When I left school the calculator and BBC Micro were just being introduced. For those of you that don’t know what a BBC Micro is look it up. How are you going to do that? Online of course. But there are a lot of people out there that think online is the washing hung up by little wooden pegs in the garden. Some old people have no idea about computers and a lot don’t want to know. But now they are figuring out that they do in fact need to know.
Social media can be a force for good but after comments made this morning I decided “Let’s see who your real friends are”. I have started to post a lot on Scope and other disabled websites about what I am trying to do and offered help at local libraries and community centres. Sending emails and receiving nothing back. “Try Age Concern in Catford” one helpful person said. So I did. It’s for people over 60. The closest one for over 50's is in another borough.
Local libraries are run by volunteers who have old people showing old people how to write an email and research their family history, on outdated computers, while the buggy brigade sing nursery rhymes to their children in a large get together in the background. Whatever happened to silence in the library? Progress.
Most of the IT classes come out of a text book written by older people and that is what they have learnt to teach people. The ECDL course for one on how to use Microsoft Word! They have no idea of the power they have in their hands when they open their laptops and don’t read about or have any interest in what it can do. They go through the motions and know certain things. Repetition: open a browser, type in what they want, click on a link. You think I’m knocking them, well I am not. I have great respect for anyone who gets out there and tries to pass on knowledge to others.
I know how hard it is to try and teach someone. But if you make it as simple as it can possibly be how can that be a bad thing? But unfortunately as most tutors out there earning £25 an hour employed by the system see me as a threat to their wages I am ignored. I offed to volunteer and only a couple of people have responded. We shouldn’t be a society that discriminates against others but that’s what life is like all over the country. When the internet took off, old people thought it was the latest fad that wouldn't last. Sadly those same people are left behind. Not so many left now but they fought for all of us and this is how we repay them. Or we would if they could get through to anyone. It’s all online now!
IT's Easy, my invention, shows people how to make that world easy. To take away the fear of using a computer, tablet or phone. I know how to get a web page and I show them how. Go to Windows Explorer, type in an address and then follow the links. Do you think that is the right way to show people? My way: 2 taps on the mouse. On a 50 inch monitor which everyone has at home. It’s called a television. Plug your laptop into the TV and they can see. Set it up right and a couple of weeks tutoring and practice and away they go. Within a few weeks they are telling me things I didn’t know you could do. That’s how it should be. Simple stupid.
My life now is hospital appointments, doctors, sleep clinic, physiotherapy, stress anxiety and teaching those who will listen. I haven't got time for social arguments with people I hardly know. So as for my quitting Facebook, if you’re reading this, I'm not really, but it proves who my real friends are.
The most important thing in life is to get out and help others. Be nice to people and fight the injustice that is all around us. For people who want showing how easy a computer can be. I might give you a few lessons and set up your machine. Even now I'm a cripple I still have uses.
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