PEOPLE/COLUMNISTS
By Ertanch Hidayettin
The late Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckenberg. I regard
these names with mixed feelings. I wish to praise them, swear at them or when I
am really angry, beat them up. Well, at least beat up Mark.
A week ago I left my phone at work. I was rushing to
go to a meeting. I noticed this when my hand automatically went to my pocket to
look for my Galaxy S4. Horror of horrors. I first thought, “Oh great!” I could test my resolve for a few days. It was Friday,
see.
In times of extreme distress, my hands begin to sweat
first. This happened after forty- five minutes into my journey. Despite the
cool air emitted through the train’s air conditioning ducts, my face too
started sweating. Cold turkey syndrome. Until I arrived home my hands kept
going into my pocket. Walking home from the station, my feet took me straight
to the nearby Tesco, where I bought a new SIM-card. First thing I did when I
went home was to find my old, antique looking phone and insert the new SIM
card into it. Fantastic. No break from a mobile.
This, dear readers is just a little personal example
of how technology has affected our lives. I am sure many of you will be
familiar with the above scenario. This episode really shook and saddened me.
Ertanch's love-hate relationship with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg |
I saw a nice picture of my dear friend Beste Sakalli,
the poet on Facebook. Where else?! The photo showed her looking at old letters
her viewers had sent her during the time she presented the Papatya Seferler programme on Kıbrıs Genc TV. Yes, you heard
right. I said letters. Actual, handwritten letters. This took me back to those good old times
before the advent of email. I remembered those letters I wrote to my grandmother
and auntie who lived in Lefkoşa. Letters I had hidden deep into the large wicker baskets full of
orange and tangerines. It was during the times of communal strife in the
sixtees, and an innocent thing like a child’s letter might have put the driver
in danger if found.
There was a pen-pal fashion when I was a student in Cyprus . Kids
wrote letters to pen pals all over the world. My friends and I chose English
girls and boys to write to. The aim was to improve our English. I lamented
those times when technology had not yet started to make such a devastating
impact on our lives.
Nowadays, children first familiarise themselves with
the computer keyboard, before the pencil or pen. I attended a parents’ evening
at my 9-year-old granddaughter Melek’s school just before the summer holidays.
We were taken to her class. Each child had a drawer, and in each drawer was a
10 inch iPad. These, and of course the internet, are liberally used in lessons.
My 5-year-old other granddaughter Jeyda can competently use my desk-top. She
can start it, find the CBeebies site, play games, watch videos and listen to
music. All well and good. But how many parents nowadays buy their children
pens, pencils, drawing brushes, books? Very few. Instead, children’s rooms are
full of gadgets: iPods, iPads, iPhones, wii, X-BOX, Kindle, etc are much more
favoured.
When I was at school, our most prized possessions were
our fountain-pens. We loved these, even though our hands were forever full of
black and blue ink marks. The smell of ink is one of my favourite childhood
smells. For someone who is educated, the saying in Turkish goes: “S/he has licked lots of ink.”
Books are also destined alas to be confined gradually
into history. On my train journey to work most people use Kindle or other electronic
book readers, rather than books. I am in the minority. A few years ago, my
daughter bought me one of these contraptions as a present. I can’t go to sleep
if I don’t read. On the night I received my present, while using the Kindle, I
felt sleepy. The damn thing fell and hit me squarely on the head. I explained
the smallish bump on my head as, “I
walked into the door”! The next day the Kindle went back to the place it
was purchased. I bought 10 books with the money. I left the place
enthusiastically smelling my books. I felt the strange looks of the sales
people. I was not bovvered.
I used to love taking pictures. I had a very old
Yassica. The other day I re-discovered it. I went straight to Tesco. In my
wisdom, I planned to get a 35 mm. film and once again take interesting photos
with my tired old camera. The sales girl looked at me as if I presented her
with something out of the Paleolithic Age. After an intensive conference with
her equally young and puzzled manager, she came and told me that unfortunately
they did not sell films for such things. Yes, she actually said “things”.
Our mobiles nowadays perform a multitude of tasks, including
acting as a camera. In 10 years, if they start serving tea, I would not be
surprised. Two sugars please. As for Facebook, the thing that has lead to my
dependence on mobiles. The worst mistake I made was to upload the Facebook
application onto my mobile. I keep checking the damn thing. Who wrote what, who
put up what pictures. I once uninstalled it. My plan was to look at Facebook
only on my desktop and only for a half hour each day. After half an hour I
re-installed it on my mobile.
Look at a friends gathering. After a few minutes
chatting, mobiles come out, if they are not already on the pub table. Everyone
gets busy checking their emails. But most are checking Facebook. Snaps are
taken to be shared on Facebook. My friends and I do this too. It’s not just a
young persons’ affliction. In actual fact because Facebook is being used by so
many old people like me that youngsters are increasingly dropping it.
Another summer holiday is behind us. I managed to
follow the holiday escapades of my friends. On Facebook. Day-by-day. Where they
visited, who they saw, where they ate, which beaches they frequented. All were
revealed on Facebook. Did I want to follow these in such detail? I think not.
But I have had to! Being on holiday is actually the only time I manage to drag
myself away from my mobile and Facebook. I take my most basic phone, which is
not capable of receiving Internet, thus Facebook with me. I use it for its
original purpose. To make and receive phone calls. However I do share a few
holiday snaps on Facebook. But only on my return. It’s a miracle
how I succeeded in this.
My dear readers, technology is very important. It has
made our lives much easier. It has cut down time wasting. We can’t do without
it. It has many positive attributes. However, if not used properly it can
overtake our lives in devastatingly negative ways.
T-VINE columnist Ertanch Hidayettin is a Cypriot Turk of African
heritage. He arrived in the UK
in 1970 and qualified as a teacher before choosing a career in local
government. He has 30 years experience working for local authorities in various
posts and was an Equality Officer for Islington Council before retiring in
2007. Since then he has worked with the National Resource Centre for
Supplementary Education (NRCSE), supporting supplementary schools in North London .
He is a community activist and a media commentator, presenting on Kıbrıs Genç TV
and writing a regular Turkish column for Kıbrıs Postası.
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