There’s a running theme of the value of Lo-Tech in all of my books.  I wonder why…

A few weeks ago I received some communications from my internet and telecoms provider.

‘We’re moving you over to our NEW digital home phone service!’ it chirped.  The service had a funky name, and arcs of laser light swept across the information leaflet.  It all looked jolly dynamic and efficient.

But a few sentences later, they casually dropped this little bombshell: ‘… some telecare and burglar alarms won’t work …’

Wait, WHAT?  

Are you telling me that ‘upgrading’ to digital results in essential security and assistance equipment no longer working?  What the heck?

And it got worse …

‘What if there’s a power outage?’ somebody asked. 

‘If there’s a power cut or your broadband’s down, you won’t be able to make calls … including 999 calls.’

SAY THAT AGAIN??

‘You won’t be able to make 999 calls.’ 

‘But your mobile will still work as long as it’s charged …’

Oh, brilliant … 

As long as my mobile phone is charged, I will have access to emergency services if I need them in a power cut.  But if my phone runs out of battery, I will have to wait for the power cut to finish before I can recharge my phone and finally call for help.

They didn’t go into what would happen if the mobile phone network broke down…

This is NOT progress.  This is rubbish.  Yet it was being sold to me as a vision of a bright future.

I have an old, analogue ‘click’ phone which I used to plug in, in a power cut.  I knew that in a national emergency, when the mobile networks might be down too, this little phone could be a vital lifeline.  The old phone lines used to work in a power cut, you see … so my basic-tech phone was reliable when the big tech stuff failed.  But thanks to this ‘new, improved’ service, my humble little Lo-Tech phone doesn’t work anymore.  Further proof that Hi-Tech solutions can make things a whole lot worse.

Here’s another example.

My local bus company cut a lot of services a few months ago.  As a result, a bus I used to take to a neighbouring village no longer ran every hour, but once every two hours. This was going to be very inconvenient.  BUT the new timetable offered a solution: there was an hourly bus which went to the next town; you could get off it halfway, cross the road, and hop on the bus coming the other way, which would call in at the village.

Sounds super, doesn’t it?  Somebody had put the timetable into a computer and come up with a splendid ‘fix’.

Except … the computer didn’t know the area at all and failed to take the following details into account:

• The place they suggested you got off and crossed the road was a known accident blackspot on a busy road in the middle of nowhere
• There was no pavement to stand on as vehicles careered by
• There was no bus shelter to protect you if the weather was bad
• The bus stop was in a Wi-Fi blackspot so you couldn’t use the bus app to check the whereabouts of your bus – or see if it was late/cancelled
• Nobody used that bus stop, so there was the danger that the driver would just whizz past
• The location of the bus stop was situated in a place (I kid you not) WHICH WAS REPUTED TO BE HAUNTED

Nobody in their right mind would want to change buses there.

A humble human with an understanding of the local area would NEVER have come up with this terrible timetabling solution.  A man with a map, a geographer with judgement, a ‘biddy who buses’ – even a ghosthunter with gumption could have told the bus company that this was a crackpot way to solve the problem.  The Hi-Tech solution was stupid, creepy and downright dangerous. 

So this is why the heroic girls in my books rely on Lo-Tech to defeat the foe.  Whether it’s disabling a security camera with a baseball cap, evacuating an office with the help of some frozen prawns, or calling for assistance using cobbled-together second-hand radio parts, Lo-Tech repeatedly saves the day.  Hi-Tech will always fail at some point – or it will become so powerful that humans will need to subvert it.  Either way, it makes sense to keep our Lo-Tech options available and ready to go.

I repeat: Lo-Tech beats Hi-Tech every single time.  Never forget this – it might be the key to your survival.