Category Archives: Technology

Real Apple

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I am running, or at least starting, a technology business. Which means I’m trying to stay abreast of the technological ‘news’, if you can call it that.

These last weeks, highly respected tweeters have chastised Apple for their ‘terrible’ new maps. The iPhone 5 has received record orders/sales and shares have increased over $700 a bite. Samsung has lost a patent case.

What a load of useless, superfluous crap.

You’ve all already got a small device that sits in your pocket enables you hear the voice of someone on the other side of the globe. (The reception in my house in Kenya is better than it is in San Francisco). It can take photos, play thousands of hours of music and connect to the web. That’s absolutely AMAZING. I’m writing this on an iPad a mile in the sky, traveling at ~500 miles an hour. Hold the headlines.

Yet we’re so concerned with the next thing that we don’t for a second appreciate what we have.

Who gives a shit if the maps aren’t quite as good, or if it’s a bit thinner, or that it could, hypothetically, connect to 4G if they can be bothered to get that working too?

If anything we should all connect less.

I have, for my sins in the eyes of these commentators, an iPhone 1, still gong strong. With NO internet on it. That means unlike 90% of the population I am unable to fill every spare 10 seconds with an email or a tweet. I prefer it that way. It gives me rare moments to think, to look, to BE.

How many of these latest things… the apps, the games, the new features, actually make a shred of difference to our lives? Is much of it actually negative?

When do we say, “I’ve enough?”.

Dont get me wrong. Phones, connectivity and innovation DO good.

I’d argue that mobile phones have done more for sub-saharan African development than decades  of well-meaning aid.

At 3Desk, I’d like to help build (when we’ve cracked the UK/US market) technology that helps people in the massive informal labour economies of the developing world find work more quickly and easily. We’d like to make the global labour market more liquid.

That would be important, and fun.

Yet my good friend and old business partner Al Harris reminded people this week that whilst the largest Arctic melt EVER recorded was occurring the BBC, even, was far more concerned with a Princesses’s nipples. Nipples, for fuck sake… who cares, like smartphones, weve all got them. I’d suspect yours work just fine.

The news, technology news especially, seems only concerned with whats new (I guess the clue is in the name) and not what’s important. We desperately need to filter and ignore the pieces of information that use up our valuable attention.

Even the ‘important’ news. Syria. The Presedential Election. Japan and China. How much of it is actually useful to you and me in our daily lives? I’m not suggesting it’s not life-changing, critical, for those involved. But for the home-counties-kitchen-table-banging white male who’s never been to any of these countries – wouldn’t it be better to pay more attention to their wives, their children, their local community and their own lives?

The Internet is a wonderful thing, helping cultures understand each other and transparency. But where do we stop?

Let’s focus on technology that makes a positive difference. Ignore superfluous news, even if it has the lure of scandal or celebrity.

Try to ignore the marketeers pull. Don’t be a consumer, of news or goods without understanding the cost to your life and the drag on your time and your attention.

Spend less time online and more time doing amazing things with the people you love.

Be present. Switch off in order to tune in.

Remind yourself that for all the camping outside of technology stores, the products don’t even and probably will never ever come close to the wonder of the human eye, the brain, the nervous system, the rustle of the wind through the trees, or a real apple.

Some of the most beautiful technology has been around for a while. Try finding someone who can build this today.

A PhD in Twitter

Posted on by Simpletom
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I did this interview Bill Lampos for 3Desk. It wasn’t really meant for Simpletom, but I loved the way Bill was honest and modest and seemed to embody simplicity, so I thought I’d share (shortened to be more applicable here) 

http://www.lampos.net/ 

Tom (@brightgreen): you were very clever/lucky (delete as appropriate) to choose Twitter, back before it was wildly popular on which to base your thesis. What made/makes it so interesting?

Bill (@lampos) Social Media offers another way of looking at our society. My research investigated methods for mining information about events in the real world, based on Twitter data – shedding new perspective on important trends. Of course, I also use Twitter or Facebook as tools for various aspects of my personal online entertainment and socialising, in general but I’m not sure that’s as new, or interesting.

Social media enables a unique new form of analysis – allowing us to watch and learn from the spread of information in real-time. To me, that’s way more exciting than seeing photos of my friends’ holidays, love them as I do.

@brightgreen: What can we do now as a society that we couldn’t without Twitter?

@lampos This is an interesting question because – in my opinion – there are two answers.

The first one encapsulates the great impact that Twitter has in timely information spread, not only events related to entertainment (such as sport or artistic occurrences), but more importantly the sudden social political bursts such as the Arab Spring, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, or for me the situation unfurling in Greece. By sharing information quickly among such a diverse set of nations, Twitter has brought people closer, creating a togetherness or sense of unity. For example, before the Twitter era, it would have been hard for me to find trusted information about troubled regions around the globe, such as Syria, Bahrain or Egypt. Perhaps more importantly I didn’t care so much. I can now follow and better understand things on an international level as well as helping create greater bonds on a national level.

On the flip side, we should not ignore the silent issue – that society is also being ‘restricted’ by the existence of Social Media such as Twitter, especially in terms of social expression and psychical interaction, as well as the increasing concerns about the possible violations on user privacy.

@brightgreen You’ve probably spent more time analyzing Twitter than anyone outside of Twitter towers. Tell us a couple of things you’ve learnt that most users won’t have realized.

@lampos At the moment, there are many research groups working to analyze Social Media in various ways; several interdisciplinary projects are funded by the European Union. This not only proves the importance of the content published on the Social Web, but also reveals that there are many people who have been analyzing it for research purposes; I am just one of them.

Twitter is not about ‘you’ or the individual, despite the way many people interact with it. Twitter harnesses the interests of a variety of people – it is about that interaction, the communication between people rather than the people themselves.

Tweets should be well timed – usually this reflects an event happening in real time – and to be well articulated (which comes with practice and talent) and address the right audience.

Usually, Twitter users construct a persona, a character through their messages. This character should be well defined and stable as it quite often is the main reason that attracted followers on the first place.

Those are just some general hints; if you ask me, I’d rather be more spontaneous than imposing strategies and rules on my tweets. I have observed that my Twitter messages are well accepted when I am emotional.

@brightgreen What next for you?

@lampos I will further my research on Social Media by doing a post-doc as part of an EU funded project. Our aim in this project is to use Twitter as well as other web sources to investigate trends related to socio-political opinion or financial indicators.

@brightgreen What do people continue to get wrong when using Twitter?

@lampos Twitter is not Facebook; many users get confused about this. As a rule of thumb, their messages – which by default are visible to everyone – should not be about their ‘common’ everyday activities, unless the latter fit in a more general purpose or are amusing.

Twitter is not a platform for lengthy conversations or chatting. It is also quite straightforward to unfollow somebody; un-friending in Facebook might be taken as a personal insult. That gives the Tweeter the power to refine what and who they follow – not enough people use that power.

@brightgreen What matters more: who follows you or how many followers you have?

@lampos It depends on the purpose of each Twitter account. If one desires to disseminate information to a big set of recipients, then increased values on both those features will help. Alternatively, if you want to be seen as a potentially interesting account to follow, then proof for this may be provided by having ‘prestigious’ followers as well as having a small followers to followees ratio (say lower than .5). Note that it is easy to increase the number of followers by exploiting the ‘follow-back’ behavior of Twitter users. Consequently, an increased amount of followers alone does not say much about a person’s Twitter account.

@brightgreen You studied the spread of flu using Twitter, can you sum up your thesis in a few sentences?

@lampos ‘Nowcasting’ flu rates was just one case study (http://geopatterns.enm.bris.ac.uk/epidemics/). In a sentence, one finding of my Ph.D. states that we can use content from the Social Media to track the occurrence and magnitude of several types of events emerging in the real world. It is also interesting that, based on Twitter content, we are in the position to investigate socio-political patterns. Here’s something I put together which measures ‘the mood of the nation’ (http://geopatterns.enm.bris.ac.uk/mood/).

@brightgreen It’s also proving useful for understanding what’s going on back in your home country, Greece – how do you follow movements there?

@lampos During the past year, I have found a set of people, who are mainly based in Greece, with similar beliefs to mine. Most of them have an active participation in all socio-political events and usually tweet about it. There is also a famous independent citizen journalism effort initiated by radiobubble.gr; people, who support this initiative, tweet real-time news using the hashtag #rbnews. Established news outlets such as The Guardian or Al Jazeera have quite often referred to it.

@brightgreen What’s the best thing Twitter has achieved?

@lampos I think that Twitter ‘addicts’ or specialists will come up with various answers to this question; ‘best’ is always a matter of perspective.

One great achievement of Twitter is, as I mentioned, creating a foundation of a togetherness among people on an international level. After using Twitter for some time now, I feel closer to people in the US, Australia, Egypt and so on, as I get to see, in practice, that we approach the world in a very similar manner. It helps to narrow social, ethnic and cultural divides.

Twitter assists the timely and uncensored dissemination of significant events; this platform promotes citizen journalism. To an extent, Twitter also forces citizen journalists to undertake their ‘hobby’ with more professionalism and in a much more thoughtful manner.

Professional media has also benefited from information sharing on Twitter since their employees cannot physically be everywhere. I was surprised when a journalist from BBC contacted me on Twitter to ask about the current situation in Greece (during one of the riots) because I was translating into English messages from people on location.

In terms of research, Twitter content enables a diverge set of experiments for various scientific disciplines (such as Artificial Intelligence, Sociology or even Psychiatry) to be conducted on large-scale amounts of data, something that was impossible in the past.

@brightgreen What’s your perfect job? Where’s your favourite (or third) desk?

@lampos There is no such thing as a perfect job. Having said that, I enjoy to work on something not because it may be supported by a good salary, but because I really like and find it interesting. Obsession usually defines perfection for me; I know this is unhealthy. However, as I grow older, I try to reduce this egoistic perspective to the extent possible; I am trying to pursue activities that in the future might benefit others as well. I think that 3Desk is a timely idea, helping people connect with work that doesn’t tie them to a permanent role – especially as the workforce is becoming more fluid through the utilisation of smart technology.

My favourite desk could be anything located anywhere; the only constraint is having ‘beautiful’ people around it and a decent amount of desk space.

The New Scheme – 3Desk

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I’ve been working on a new business for a while now – it’s just birthing as I write this (www.3desk.com). Here’s the first blog post, which explains why and hopefully ties back to simplicity:

—

It’s rather strange that in the interconnected, multicultural, permeable world in which we live, most companies have permanent employees and most people a job with a single company.

Employees tend to work full-time – often in a single location, with a set team usually chosen by others and salary that mostly changes yearly and incrementally. The corporate ‘culture’ is often dictated, projects pre-determined, set holiday allowances given and rules and regulations created to enable the managers to manage.

Those lucky enough to be able to choose their employers tend to make their decisions on the basis of a combination of factors that make certain organisations more attractive than others.

Yet employees still work for ‘a’ company with all of its quirks and features. People can spend years in atmospheres which, left to their own devices, they would never have designed themselves. There is often a disconnection between someone’s desires and what they are forced to accept and yet many of us spend most of our waking hours within this system.

Savvy investors would never invest all their savings into one stock and yet the norm is to work for one company.

Try to get a mortgage as a successful freelancer with multiple sources of revenue and it’s highly likely that you’ll find the bank less willing to lend you money than if you’re employed by one company. Which, given you’ve got more sources of income, surely is less risky?

People are either in, or they’re out. Employed or unemployed.

At least that’s how it’s been and is… mostly.

Given the recession, technological advances and mobility, things are changing. A recent article stated that as many as 35% of the US workforce will be freelancing in the next 10 years.

I’ve just picked up a book by Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, called ‘The Start Up of You‘. It’s a manifesto to self-reliance and becoming more entrepreneurial about work as more and more of us turn to ‘portfolio’ careers.

In the ‘further reading’ section of the book, ‘Free Agent Nation‘ is the first book mentioned – a book ahead of its time, which promotes being a ‘free agent’, another way of describing a freelancer, or contractor.

The employment landscape is shifting. With online freelance marketplaces, like Elance and Odesk, more and more people are able to work remotely, choosing their projects.

However, there are many more freelancers who work face-to-face across the globe, from contractors on building sites to those working for the UN in refugee camps, to designers of high-end technology.

At 3Desk, we believe that the future of work will be freer, more flexible. People will be ‘agents’ rather than employees. We’d love for people to be able to have more choice.

Imagine a liquid market for talent, in which someone knows their value. A market in which people choose who they work for, when they work and for how much.

Our dream is that in 20 years, the Harvard MBA graduation class will predominantly choose to freelance because of the advantages that this brings – like taking time off when they want to, work with people they liked, setting their terms or choosing a 3-day week to spend time with their kids because they can earn enough that way.

Sure, there are advantages to the safety net that a company provides and the hassle that is removed through collecting people to together for a singular goal. We’re not extolling the removal of organizations, but instead making them more porous.

Imagine employers being able to choose the talent they need as and when they need it. Instead of bringing in a big consulting firm to work on a project, what if they were able to select the best 12 people in the market, who’ve worked together before on other projects and have chosen one another. Imagine hiring them directly for their skills, without having to pay for the centre-of-town offices, marble receptions and other costs associated with creating a ‘consulting brand’, which really is a way of trying to collect the greatest talent ‘within’ a business, because that’s ‘how it’s done’.

Imagine if the unemployed could find pieces of work in their neighbourhoods, to help bring in small pieces of income and reduce the feeling that a full-time job is the only way.

Although a long way off, that’s why we started 3Desk - because we believe that both employers and employees want more security AND more flexibility – and it is only through creating a liquid marketplace, where people understand their true value, that they are able to work the way they want to.

It’s early days, but in time we’d love to try to help people feel that being an independent agent had all of the benefits of a full-time job, with less of the negatives – as well as reducing the loneliness, or problems that being an independent currently causes – from pensions and benefits, to ensuring people feel part of something bigger than themselves.

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Tech Startups and Simplicity

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Over the last few months, I’ve immersed myself in the world of the internet startup, funny little world that it is (to many within, it is there whole universe – please remind me of this as I delve deeper into the labyrinth).

Never has so much money and time been spent on so many lines of code that to most of us, make absolutely no sense at all.

Those that win, win big and fast – creating young billionaires/millionaires. But like every ‘hot’ market, the higher-profile-characters are a lucky few – many, many more toil unhealthy hours in the pursuit of e-recognition and riches.

There are obvious challenges to the simplicity-seeker here, for example:

- The reduction of in-person interaction, relying instead on the virtual

- An unhealthy desire for riches which, when obtained quickly, result in a lottery-win style appreciation and mass envy even though there is evidence of little contribution to overall happiness and some rather outrageous spending habits

- Building technology to solve problems that before we built all this technology weren’t problems – solutions layered on problems, layered on solutions

- Waste – mind-boggling amounts of people working on algorithms and sites that serve no purpose initially or eventually – the Mary Celestes of the web, of which there are many millions more than there are Facebooks. Although in fairness, the same can be said of many other areas of life

- The work ethic, which seems to promote the ‘every-waking-hour-in-front-of-a-screen-is-the-only-way’ approach

Yet there are also some fascinating lessons for simplicity:

Today, simplicity rules when it comes to web startups – in design, user-experience, products and even methodology.

The advice of the moment is to build only what you need to – be lean, create only a minimum-viable product (MVP) before you launch. My favourite simplicity quote, ‘perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but nothing left to take away’ (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) is never more relevant than in the tech scene at the moment, where people are being encouraged to kill features, rather than add them and to make startups as simple as possible in order to test assumptions.

Entrepreneurs are being advised to run their businesses like a meditative mind – removing all unnecessary noise and focusing instead on the present moment.

Consumers too, are demanding simplicity in terms of user experience (UX) and some of the greatest successes are those that have enabled us to simplify.

Google – their home-page design is one of the simplest of the web (and the most popular)

Dropbox – as simple a file-sharing service as possible

Apple – a UX which works, is intuitive and has a simple elegance

This article, which I mentioned long ago in a similar post, talks about simplicity as a source of competitive advantage:

Technology is good. But my sense is that many people are developing it for all the wrong reasons in ways that are unhealthy and make little sense.

Over the coming months, perhaps years – if things go according to plan – I will be further immersing myself in this somewhat bizarre, much-feted world and, I hope, retaining an iota of my simplicity ideology and a balanced life.

Technology enables me to work almost without interruption from my house (although I write this from London) – the question is whether or not I’ll get there as often, whether I can build something that makes the world a little simpler and whether or not I can achieve a balance in my own life as I go.

Beautiful Technology

The Skype Drink – Technology Hacks

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Technology doesn’t always have to be a bane to us simple-seekers.

I learnt about a new phenomena this week, called the Skype drink. I doubt you’ll have heard of it because I’ve borrowed the expression from a friend who might be unique in his adoption of this adaptation

It entails setting up a time to have a drink with a friend who is a long way away and instead of doing it in a pub or bar – having that drink on Skype. He sits there with good friends sipping on a beer or cup of tea and sets time to have a chat, regardless of the usual ‘get the conversation done’ attitude that Skype can promote.

I love it when we break with the norm and use technology, or habits, in ways that help us rather than hinder us.

Rather than ‘like’ a friend’s post, or forward an email, here are a few things I like to do:

  • Write a note to a friend who I haven’t spoken to in a while, or have been thinking of to say ‘I love and miss you’. Perhaps followed by an encouragement that the person doesn’t have to respond
  • Ring someone for absolutely no reason at all
  • Write a postcard, even if I’m at home. There’s one friend (you know who you are), to whom I always send postcards that come from one place and then send them from another. i.e. pick up a postcard in Prague and then write it and get a friend to send it when she heads out to Beijing. Quirky, but fun!
  • Make a mix CD and send it, the days of mix tapes are gone, but the love of them aint. The reason why I have a house in Kenya is probably because I once sent a mix CD out to a new friend out there and that’s when she realised we were buddies.
  • Using an iPad as a table tennis bat*
  • Set up a reminder on your computer not to use your computer any more
* not true

Simple Letter of the Week

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The Letter of the week in the week a few weeks back was a wonderful reminder to disconnect:

To the Independent:

“I went to hear James Cleick talk at the British Library a few weeeks ago about how we are constantly subjected to almost infinite amounts of information. I talked to him about this later, and we agreed that self-filtering is an inevitability. Not spam-filtering – self-filtering.”

“I walked home thinking about this, and had a Eureka moment somewhere around Clerkenwell. I threw my iPhone in a bin. I expect a homeless person now has it; best £500 I ever threw away.”

“The next day I bought a little Nokia with a decent-ish camera on it for £50, and downloaded my phone numbers onto it from my laptop. Then I took the laptop into my office and haven’t brought it back. I now live without a computer. It was like giving up drugs.”

“That Saturday I lay in bed reading a book. I have started scanning Time Out over lunch to see what’s on, and now go to see interesting stuff in the evenings as I used to. I’m not sure why this has happened, but it has. My partner has commented on how relaxed I am and how much more I seem to do in a day. I am aware of the common pitfalls of reformed addicts so I hardly ever mention this to my friends. The ones who have noticed think I’m a weird luddite.”

“I feel a little like the only AA person in a pub. They all sit checking their iPhones frantically every minute or so. And me? Well, I don’t”

Tim Pyne, London

Welcome Tim! Not sure about the tramp with the iPhone, maybe a charity would have been better – but sometimes you just don’t worry about what trousers you’re wearing when you have a Damascene moment.

There has also been other pieces recently about disconnecting. This from Rowdy Kittens is a nice piece, plus I noticed another article which mentioned that more and more people are disconnecting from Facebook. Bring it  the on. Or is that off.

Have a great bank holiday, UKers.

iQuit (part 2) Simply giving up

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Not altogether.

iQuitting completely would be a little bit over dramatic.

But I’m iQuitting or at least reducing a number of habits. Bad ones.

I used to be a slave to e-mail. I still find myself checking the e-letter-box each morning with an alarming neurosis, but I’m slowly improving.

It feels good not to check mails for a few days. I press the delete key more often, and check e-mails considerably less.

I need to send a lot of emails for work, but I’m stemming the tide… slowly.

I used to have two iPhones, one for the US and one for the UK. I still have them because I don’t believe in buying new stuff for the sake of it – but I use ‘pay as you go’ and therefore can’t use any on-the-move Internet services. It’s just a phone. Sure, it’s like filling a Ferrari with chip fat, but it works. I save a small fortune in time and money. Plus in the rare moments when I’m on the tube or waiting for a friend I can sit and think or, god forbid, read a book (no, not a newspaper or magazine, which is just more of the same).

I used to answer these phones and reply to text messages immediately. Now I leave them off for hours, or fail to reply. My friends and even my clients still seem to tolerate me — in small doses.

I used to be up to date with all the programmes that helped my efficiency, whether they be faster browsers, databases or widgets. Now I use a moleskin to write most things down and tend to ignore new installments, or software. You should try paper — it’s amazing — you can draw anything without having to plug anything in, and it has all the latest features like crossing out, sketching, writing and tangible capabilities, only limited by your own skill and page-turning abilities.

I used to desire the latest, shiniest, fastest computer, but now I use the same Mac I’ve had for four years. I recently took it in to be serviced and Apple kindly (despite this rant, they’re still a good company) made it almost as good as new, replacing a number of worn out bits. I hope it lasts another five years. If it’s a little slower than it used to be, that’s just fine.

I used to have a huge hard drive with all my songs and movies on it, in case I needed something. Now I delete all films I’ve watched and all songs I don’t like.

I used to keep chat open in case people needed me. Now I always leave chat off, or remain invisible. They can call me.

I used to have a great stereo, fast car and all the gismos. Now I only have the things here in Berlin that I need, nothing more.

Here’s to iQuitting. I started a group on Facebook, relishing the delicious irony. It got a full eight members before I realised I had to administer every member. Then I realised how rubbish Facebook really was and decided to give up Facebook altogether. I tried deactivating my page, which felt good. Then I realised I don’t really abuse Facebook too often anyway, so I’m back, but Facebook-lite. If you’re reading this because of my link on my Facebook page, that’s automatic, by-the-by.

I truly believe that Facebook isn’t good for us – here’s an interesting article explaining why. 

This week I’ve started purging my Twitter account of useless followers. A few thousand down already, I’m going to see if I can get down under a hundred.

There will be more tales of deactivation shortly. First, I must revel in the sense of liberation I have from iQuitting.

Try unplugging, removing and ignoring.

It’s time to iQuit, bit by bit.

iQuit

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If I get yet another e-mail that smugly notifies me that the e-mail received was ‘sent from my iPad’ or ‘iPhone’, I will set up an auto-filter that highlights these e-mails to warn me that they were sent by someone with little time (or at least someone that is SO busy that they have to check e-mails on the move).

This might help me determine which e-mails have been sent thoughtfully and with love, rather than absentmindedly and on the hoof.

Or perhaps an auto-reply with something equally smug in return, like ‘sent from my iGod’… so important have these mobile devices become.

iPhones and iPads and instant messaging and Facebook updates and Twitter and Internet on effing planes – the onslaught is evil.

Yes that includes these rambles. Don’t bother reading this blog, go and have a cup of tea or a pint of beer with a friend if you can.

We’re all so busy keeping ourselves busy that we have no time.

Today I’m off to Berlin for a while…

I’ve had enough.

iQuit

Trying To Stay Simple

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It perhaps comes as no surprise, given my regular blathering on the subject, that simplicity is more complicated than its innocent name belies.

On returning to the UK from Africa, I’ve noticed not only how complicated many things are, but also how difficult it is to live simply.

Although many things are ‘easy’ – as I mentioned in my recent post – maintaining simplicity is not one of them.

Yes, that’s somewhat of a contradiction – easy, yet complicated. But bear with me.

Let’s look at keeping myself fed, watered and cleaned, for example.

In Kenya, it was difficult to find much processed food to consume – yet in the UK we need to go to specialist shops to find food that hasn’t been molested.

There was never much worry about being paralysed by having to choose from a plethora of varieties of the same item in Kenya. Here I find myself confusedly wandering along supermarket aisles. Wondering, for example, how it is possible that there are so many variables to think about when wiping my bottom. Obviously I should know that I need pink, chlorine-free, padded, double-quilted, golden-mean designed helical patterns that optimise wipal load bearing, 10:1 removal suck ratio micro-pores and slide saturation avoidance…

I tried to have a cup of coffee the other day and found myself face to face with a Nespresso machine that I might have suspected, had I not fortunately been warned by George Clooney, was a small atomic device. Surely Al Quaeda will take advantage of this similarity and the fact that many airport lounges eagerly stock them for their next attack? You heard it here first.

After first determining that the small metallic mushroom (which looked about as far from a coffee-containing item that it is possible to imagine) contained the coffee I desperately craved, I spent a good five minutes pulling levers and removing water-filling devices and emptying more mushrooms from secreted trays. Nothing worked. It felt as if I had been given an electron microscope and a pair of pliers to remove a splinter.

I finally realised after a few minutes more that, despite looking like it had its own internal power station, the machine needed to be plugged in and on at the mains so, finally, I managed to extract a disappointingly thimble-sized squeeze of coffee at, the marketers would have me believe, ‘the touch of a single button’.

Sadly it was lukewarm because the milk I poured into it was so cold (damn these efficient fridges) that I then had to head to the microwave for a burst of heat. This involved pushing all manner of buttons (in the way you always do with a microwave) that resulted in some elaborate cooking schedule for 3.54 kg of frozen lamb. Fortunately, I terminated the heating process after a few seconds and extracted a scalding cup, hoping the next microwave user was a professional code breaker.

When I discovered I’d made a cup of decaffeinated coffee (as an aside, the red mushrooms should be avoided, as should clouds of the same description) I did some shouting and smashing things inside my head.

Coffee, after all, is needed when one’s brain is not working. That’s precisely the point of the stuff. I have no doubt that Nespresso will be held liable in an American courtroom for some catastrophe caused by a lack of alertness because some desperate soul wasn’t able to get his fix due to overcomplexity.

I tore out an advert from a magazine which is about Siemens’s latest coffee machine which advertises, I kid you not:

A senso flow system, an aroma pressure system, an aroma double shot, a single portion cleaning, an auto whirl plus, a direct whirl, a cream cleaner, a one touch function, an individual cup volume, a cream centre, a cream centre cleaner, an auto valve system, a silent ceram drive and a ceram drive.

Extrodinary. Could I just have a cup of coffee please?

It’s not just food and drink…

If your Internet breaks in Kenya, a representative from your network provider will often stop by within a few hours to give you a hand, then give you their mobile number so you can ring them again in case of difficulty, or perhaps head to their house to meet their children and share some goat.

In the UK, as happened to my exasperated father recently, it took him a few hours on switchboards talking to representatives of dubious intelligence to get an appointment for a few weeks later in order for someone to come and fix the machine. When they finally arrived, he discovered that they knew less about the wireless router in the house than he did so an elaborate dance followed, resulting in calling in a specialist independent consultant, who discovered that the ‘engineer’ had committed the Internet equivalent of making a mud pie at the Chelsea Flower Show.

I certainly wouldn’t be so uncouth as to mention the company by name, but I will inform you that they give young chaste individuals, who have yet to indulge in sexual excesses, a bad name.

Don’t get me wrong. It is easy to get stuff done in the UK and it is, as I also mentioned, so easy to moan.

But there are some things in this land that are so absolutely superfluous that one has to wonder whether all the hard work that has gone into making them is really worth the effort. Cue our toilet paper engineer, or the team further down the production chain who do the experiments. Perhaps they have a huge Nespresso machine to aid their tests – perhaps they can manage to get it to produce coffee in quantities that ensure that they need the very best paper.

I’m moaning I know. In fact, it is wonderful to be back and tip an orange juice, followed by a glass of cold wine, followed by some prawns, a packet of crisps, some nuts, a cake and a coffee down my throat – followed by a few indigestion tablets and then slamming the mess you’ve made into the dishwasher. It’s mind-boggling where all these things have come from.

I’m just saying that I don’t think I’m any happier with all these things. Plus it’s difficult to wiggle one’s way through simply without becoming a-tangled in the fray of other people’s business and inventions all in the name of making it easier to do things that were already easy.

Anyhow, I must go. I’m working on a design for a machine that will help

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