The Dullest Blog: comedy ramblings to inspire the most tedious minute of your week

The Internet. One of the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs in human history. It keeps each and every one of us in touch with one another 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the click of a mouse.  Well, that’s the theory at any rate.  Try using a 3 dial-up dongle anywhere north of Inverness, and you’ll soon find out how worldwide the web actually is.   Indeed, getting access to e-mail on the Scotrail Express between Glasgow and Edinburgh can be a lottery.

Each generation has a different attitude to the development of technology.   It is easy to adopt the stereotypical attitude that older people struggle to cope with new innovations whereas kids are almost programmed to grasp any tech technology immediately.  But the legions of silver-surfers in their 60s and 70s, who do everything online, from booking hotels to managing their bank accounts to organising petitions about wheelie-bins to ordering Stannah stair-lifts gives the lie to this prejudice.  Nonetheless, sometimes it is true.

And ignorance is not restricted to the old. 20 years ago, when faxes were “new technology” I had a job with the council education department.   The 17-year-old office junior was convinced that the fax machine was broken, as every time she tried to use it, the paper came out at her end and didn’t go down the phone line to head office.

Indeed, new technology can be used to promote the most Neanderthal of viewpoints.  For example, the Free Presbyterian Church (aka The Taliban of the Christian faith) hardly the least progressive of religions, have recently set up a website.  Its aim is to unite followers of the Wee Free creed throughout the Globe.   Which it does, but never on a Sunday.   It recognises the timezone from where you are attempting to log on, and if you are doing so on the Sabbath, it immediately denies access.

Similarly, as the recent European elections sadly pointed up, both the BNP and the UK Independence Party made use of the internet as a fundamental plank in their campaign strategy.   Strange that two groups who hate foreigners so much should be using the World Wide Web to spread the message.