Technology changes our lives for the better; that’s always what we’ve been led to believe.
From mobile phones that can solve arguments with a simple five-second Google search (“See? It WAS Peter O’Toole!”) to cars that clearly display on a computer screen the lamppost we’re about to hit, there’s no question that we’re living in extraordinary times.
When I look back on the days of my youth, filled with VHS tapes, cassettes, TVs the size and weight of a refrigerator, and dial-up internet, I boggle at how far we’ve come. Isn’t it amazing how simple things are now? That’s exactly how I felt, right up to when my father and I went through the process of trying to revive an email account over the phone.
Allow me to preface this tale by stating that my dad is no tech slouch. My only real advantage is my background in IT and the fact that I’m more familiar with the latest gadgets. In this particular case, Yahoo had seen fit to kick my mother out of her account because she hadn’t realised the caps lock key was on when she was typing in her password. Happens to all of us at some point. By the time she twigged what was going on, she was locked out for security reasons. Dad figured he’d help and called me to assist. Not a problem; we’d have this sorted in a jiffy.
I suggested we set it up as her default mail account on her iPad, so we started going down that route. He chose Yahoo when given the option, and then was prompted to type in her email address and password.
“Hi Vicki, that seems to be working – it’s just about to go to another screen… [Vicki prepares to say love you, goodnight, and hang up] … no, wait a minute… It’s asking me to prove I’m not a robot.”
Ugh. Here we go, down the CAPTCHA rabbit hole.
Sure enough, up came that grid of pictures we all dread.
“Hang on, Vic, I have to choose all the images with traffic lights. Honestly, how do they expect anyone to see anything in these tiny squares?”
I heard some tapping down the phone, accompanied by grunts of frustration.
“Right, I think I’ve got them all. Choosing ‘verify’. Oh for… now I have to pick all the ones with crosswalks! Who the hell designs these things? I can barely make them out!”
I waited on the other end, a thin veil of sweat on my forehead. Please, oh please, let there be no crosswalk left unchosen.
“Verifying again. I think that’s it. Wait … I don’t believe this – it’s just taken me back to the main mail screen!”
“Okay, Dad, maybe it’s a timeout thing. Let’s try again from the start.”
So began at least 30 minutes of attempts, with my poor father trying to control his temper through quadrants of motorbikes, stairs, buses, and anything else CAPTCHA could dream up to try and catch a human being out. At one point, he spent two minutes trying to discern whether a smudge in the back right of an image was, in fact, a couple of steps (and did those qualify as stairs?) or maybe the ghost of Florence Nightingale. How do we prove we’re not a robot? We don’t put a hammer through the screen of our device when subjected to this Kobayashi Maru. “THERE!! How about THAT?! Did I get all the traffic lights now???!!!”
I could not believe how complicated the whole business had become. Even before we’d started down this road (with four crosswalks), mum had had to reset her password, which involved answering security questions and then having a code sent to her phone. I thought part two would be a doddle.
On our ninth attempt, Dad was typing at a snail’s pace. He wanted to make absolutely sure he was getting every letter correct. He’d already hit the microphone button once, by mistake, which subsequently filled the password field with “shouldnotbethisridiculoushowdoesanyonenotlosetheirmind”. Even after doing everything perfectly, he got kicked back to the very beginning. It was time to try a different tactic, before mere blood pressure meds would not suffice.
“Dad, I think we should forget the iPad mail app and just install Yahoo mail on mum’s iPad.”
“Okay, doing that now… ,” he replied, no doubt happy for the change of scenery.
Within two minutes, the app was installed. The inbox might not have quite the layout that mum was used to, but at least she would have her email back.
“Tap on the app, and it should ask for mum’s email address and password,” I directed.
That all went smoothly, and no CAPTCHA screen came up. But, of course, it couldn’t let us off that lightly.
“It’s asking about what theme I want,” Dad said, an air of resignation in his voice. “Dark, light, fonts… there’s a toggle to adjust it all.”
“I wouldn’t go dark,” I said. “Just choose something easy. We can always change it later.”
(Tap, tap, tap.)
“Is this really happening? It wants to know mum’s preferences for email types! People, marketing emails, subscriptions… ”
Sensing that he was, understandably, losing the will to live, I just picked the ones that seemed to make the most sense to choose, and – if I recall this correctly – finally the inbox came up in that theme colour we’d chosen a lifetime ago.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to push my luck, but it seems it is now working,” Dad said, clearly relieved.
“Excellent,” I replied, reaching for the rum.
“We’ll see how it goes, and if there are any further issues, I’ll call you,” he said.
Yes, please do. Then we can both give up and revert to stationery, envelopes and stamps.
That being said, that may not be the end of the challenges.
“First class? Airmail? Registered? Express? … Robot?”
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