Technology

If you are reading this article online, perhaps you could go to the comments section and let us know what single slightly unusual item you have bought which has brought you the most reliable and lasting happiness. Perverse answers are welcome, of course, but I am not so interested in suggestions such as ‘a Thai bride’ or ‘a brewery’ or ‘“The Concert” by Johannes Vermeer’. What I am hoping for is a list of slightly unusual domestic or practical items which you might have bought on a whim or as a slight extravagance but which subsequently you found surprisingly delightful or life-changing to the point of boring your friends about them.

If you’re reading this on Firefox, you can rest assured that your custom is not going towards any hateful, disgusting, evil people who might disagree with you on something. Not now that Mozilla boss Brendan Eich has been forced to quit for supporting Proposition 8, the Californian bill opposing gay marriage. According to the BBC: ‘Mozilla's executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker announced the decision in a blog post. "Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it," she wrote. "We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves. "We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started.

Can we protect children from the darker aspects of the internet? That was the question put to the panel last night, when the Spectator hosted a feisty discussion about the effects of technology on childhood. Child abuse, pornography and online dating were discussed, as was the idea that children have become self-centered and socially inept. Andrew Neil chaired the event, and was joined by culture minister Ed Vaizey, psychologist Oliver James, The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland and Microsoft’s Jacqueline Beauchere. Each panelist presented a different angle on the subject of The ‘Always On’ Generation, but all agreed that technology had created new opportunities and challenges.

Are children utterly obsessed with technology? Yes, is the obvious answer to that question, but debate about whether is it a good or bad thing rages around forums such as Mumsnet. Many believe the innocence of childhood has been ruined by unfettered access to the Internet, videos, games and goodness knows what else. Others instead think that every generation of children is different and parents have to move with the times instead of yearning for their own past. I have to admit I’m a little biased. I built my first computer when I was six and spent most of my teenage years faffing around with websites and attempting to code. No doubt I missed out on the joyful pursuits of kicking a football but I loved every minute of it.

With regard to modern technology, I find that people of around my age — by which I mean people in their seventies or over — are divided into two camps. There are those who have embraced the digital revolution with embarrassing enthusiasm, knowing much more about it than it is decent to know; and then there are those who, almost as embarrassingly, take pride in knowing nothing about it whatsoever. The former seem determined to show that they are not past it, that they are in tune with the modern world, and, like teenagers, are never parted from their computers, emailing and tweeting as the day is long. The latter claim to see no point in email or any of the social media and talk nostalgically about the days when people used to write each other letters in long hand.

Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter Olympics themselves. ‘Yeesss!!’ Ed Leigh might have yelled, ‘That’s the 21st construction contract for the big lad from St Petersburg, Arkady Rotenberg. Seven point four billion dollars’ worth, a new Olympic record — more than the entire cost of the 2010 Vancouver Games! How cool is that for the 62-year-old who was Vladimir Putin’s boyhood judo partner? Up next, the $9.

I am convinced that when I took my driving test in 1983 I was asked by the examiner, ‘What lane of a three-lane motorway should you use when driving at a speed of 70 mph?’ And I am equally sure that the ‘correct’ answer to this question at that time, as given by the early 1980s version of the Highway Code, was ‘the middle one’. My memory is that the three lanes of a motorway back then were designated 1) the slow lane, 2) the fast lane and 3) the overtaking lane. Whenever I mention this, however, no one else remembers anything of the kind. Rather predictably, about one in three people then takes the bait and embarks on a long rant about people ‘hogging the middle lane.

I wouldn’t worry much about the future of the British economy. Because I have a simple plan to make the UK the world’s leading exporter of mobile phones. They will be manufactured by a new consortium including Alfred Dunhill, Cordings and Bowers & Wilkins. The idea came to me when I was watching coverage of the new scandal in France, where a government security officer was photographed at 8 a.m. delivering a bag of croissants to Hollande’s love nest. My first reaction was disgust — I mean, how bad must things be in a country when even the president can’t get a cooked breakfast?

I enjoy reading reviews of kitchen gadgetry. Clever new kitchen products are often under-appreciated. Many rituals around food preparation are intended to signal personal effort, rather than to produce edible food with a minimum of fuss. There is hence a tendency towards bogus authenticity among amateur cooks which causes them to eschew labour-saving devices in favour of doing everything in a faux-Victorian fashion. Professional chefs, who must produce food in quantity every day, do not suffer this delusion: one Michelin-starred chef, when asked to name his favourite item of kitchen equipment, replied ‘the microwave’. Two new devices I particularly recommend are the air-fryer and the soupmaker. Both are commonplace in parts of Asia but were until recently unknown in Britain.

Vodafone, which has just collected an £84 billion windfall from the sale of its 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless of the US, is either a hero or an anti-hero of British capitalism, according to taste. To me, the world’s second-largest mobile phone business is heroic because it achieved that position from a standing start just 30 years ago, when poker-playing Ernie Harrison, chief executive of a military radio manufacturer called Racal, bet everything he had on the future of mobile telephony.

Will holidays ever be truly relaxing again? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Mary Wakefield and Freddy Gray discuss Clarissa Tan’s magazine cover piece on how technology has ruined our holidays. Has our love of the smartphone and tablet destroyed our ability to 'switch off'? Do we need to control our impulse to use technology? And is this all a bad thing for our brains? Alec Marsh and our cartoon editor Michael Heath wonder if London is becoming the new Venice — bustling with tourists and barren streets of houses. Michael has been a Londoner since 1935. How has the capital changed since then? Have areas like Primrose Hill lost their quirky charm thanks to the deluge of foreign money? Where do authentic Londoners now feel at home?