MICHAEL WALSH EX-MARINER: The U.S. space agency NASA once spent millions developing a pen that would write upside down or in a non-atmosphere environment. The Russians replied; ‘we use a pencil.’ A friend once boasted that if you pressed a little button on his new watch the hands lit up. I asked him if had he never heard of a luminous watch.

Why do we make our lives so complicated and for what purpose? I learned that a single edition of the New York Times contains as much information as would be acquired in an average man’s lifetime a couple of hundred years ago. Adding to my store of useless knowledge, there is much more hi-tech more hi-tech in my mobile phone than there was in the first spacecraft. Heck! All I want to do is make and take telephone calls – and not too often.

When at sea in the 1960s we used a pen and paper to write our innermost thoughts to our loved ones on the other side of the world we knew our letters would not receive our letters for many weeks. Has the internet removed the magic of distance? Some of my most evocative photos are even more popular today than they were when they were taken. The images were captured by a cheap camera, the pictures were black and white – and they needed processing when our ship arrived at its – not mine – home port months or years later.

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Today, my wife takes a full-color picture of my restaurant meal (boring huh) and the world sees what I am eating before I plunge with my knife and fork. That is progress? Really? I suppose in some ways it can be argued that we benefit from the remarkable advances that have taken place over the last decades. The next frontier to be broken down is surely the simplification of gadgets. Many of today’s aids to modern living are beyond comprehension. I download and print the instruction manual for my very modest digital camera; it is the size of a telephone directory and largely incomprehensible

This isn’t just my problem; it is our problem for we are becoming programmed to look for difficult rather than simple solutions. Why is there a reluctance to explain gadgets in a comprehensible way? I can well imagine someone replying to NASA’s scientists that the pencil solution is too simplistic. Having failed to master all but the basics in many household gadgets like the television or radio’s remote control, washing machine or coffee maker I once conceded that I had technophobia; like any other disability, I kept it to myself.

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That was until a national newspaper tested the general population on their ability to use gadgetry common to modern households. It was discovered that over 80 per cent of us cannot quite get the hang of programming devices or putting things together. In fact, I emerged with honors.

There is something about the human condition that strives for change whether it is necessary or not. They boast of multi-million-dollar fighter jets and their (allegedly) state-of-the-art early detection systems. Recently a couple of Swedish self-publicists flew a light aircraft unimpeded in and out of Belarus territory. At the height of the Cold War, a German student flew a single-seat Cessna across the USSR and landed it in Red Square. The Reds never spotted it as the pilot flew 1,800 km over Soviet territory.

Thanks to my PC I can listen to the most obscure radio stations broadcasts from the Urals to the depths of the Arizona hinterland. In fact, I like two just one radio station (Venice Classical Radio ((VCR)). I have no need for the other million. Two newspapers used to be enough; one national, one local. They kept me occupied for hours. Now I have millions to choose from but I still prefer very few: As Albert Einstein surmised: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

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