ELSA stands for "English National Study of Ageing" – not your physcial condition but to asses how we of the wiser years cope with money, transport, housing etc. The results are used to help guide planning the public services. It is a voluntary survey and I've been a guinea-pig for quite a while now.

It has just announced the next round, but unfortunately seems to have become taken over by the highly-assumptive Great Family We-all, as my enquiry to it, copied below, shows….

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Good Morning, ELSA team.

I have been an ESLA guinea-pig for a long time now, happily so, but cannot see how this will continue.

Re the announcement for the latest session. I can understand the problems of home visits during pestilences, but you offer only an alternative impossible for me, and I daresay a good many others.

Why? You assume we can all use Microsoft 'Team'.

Please do not assume that because civil-service and educational organisations use something professionally, everyone can and does domestically.

Video calls already require a microphone and camera and their software, none of which I have. Nor do I own a "tablet" your circular implies has those built in.

Any of those sold now are likely to need at least Windows 10, and much more powerful computer than my still fairly young one with WIN-7 Pro.

In fact MS has made 'Team' prefer WIN-11, needing a still more powerful hence costlier computer.

Plus the change entails transferring hundreds of files and several programmes with no guarantee of acceptance by W10 and above.

The irony is two-fold:

1) The "A" in ELSA stands for "Ageing". As we age fewer of us are likely to be able to afford replacing existing, serviceable equipment with much higher-grade, costlier versions; and to learn new, increasingly costly and difficult, professional-grade programmes.

2) ELSA has a sizeable personal finance section. If you can afford the latest computers and software you are among those fewer elderly with no money worries anyway.

I appreciate this wretched pandemic makes home-visits difficult, but they are not impossible. I fear NatCen is making a big mistake here, heavily biasing its study by potentially surveying only the "Great Family We-all" Haves and ignoring the Have-nots.

So…

…..I have no means for televisual interviewing without a huge technical gamble plus a very heavy financial outlay, when I may have to re-roof my house lest I ever need sell it to protect care-company owners from penury ….

but….

…… I would like to contine as an ELSA guinea-pig…

How, please?

Kind Regards,

[name plus this:]

Ady –

Yes, I've had problems with that wreteched .doc and .xlsx nonsense too. I have no idea what it is supposed to achieve but what it does achieve is lock the files into some sort of non-editable image or something, and in some cases make them unreadable.

That's just Microsoft messing about. God help us if they diversify into designing cars and kitchen equipment!

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Oldiron –

I think what's happened is that the people now designing the systems and web-sites have been spoon-fed computers and so-called "smart"-phones since Infant's School, and are so innured in the latest must-haves they are incapable of thinking in any other way.

Whatever they are taught about Javascript and all the rest of the whizzo stuff; the one thing that seems sadly lacking is any attempt to train them to think about their products' users, and to consider how a logical, reasonably intelligent person who only uses computers, thinks – which is not in Boolean logic and binary digits.

Taught web-site design for purpose, beyond merely how to write in C++ and concatenate pretty pictures, they might for example tell you clearly at the start of a questionnaire all the information (e.g. NI numbers, policy references) it will ask for as you wade through it.

They might also give after that, the criteria that would reject your enquiry or application to save fruitless attempts.

They might realise that random "Frequently Asked Questions" rarely if ever include your question, and anyway indicate poor or no instructions.

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This on top of the social rather than technical matter of what I call "The Great Family We-all" , which I coined after yet another surplus, metrocentric "lifestyle" or "consumer affairs" hack waffling about what "now we all" do or must not do/ drive/ own/ read/ listen to/ shop in/ eat/ drink/ enjoy as a hobby/ communicate by /….

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Oh… and no the guinea-pig was not me after the "experiments" .   

ELSA is a survey (English Longitudinal Study of Aging), not experiments as such; but besides him in the photo has much more hair on his head than I have!

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 08/12/2021 17:40:08

I suspect at heart is that all these systems are now being designed by people who have been brought up so digitally-minded that they cannot comprehend any other way of doing anything.

They appears trained in all the whizzo stuff like C++, image-manipulating and website deign, not not how to design anyhting for purpose or user. They are the administrative equivalents of the engineering students who can use CAD to the nth degree, but not to use it to design components that can be made or assemblies that can be repaired.

On top of this is the Great Family We-all, which i defined after reading yet another piece of idiocy from yet another metrocentric "lifestyle" hack assuming "now we all" live rather as database drop-down menu choices. An "approved" life revolving around so-called "smart 'phones" , "everyone" working in offices (aka the kitchen table), "all" having the same arts, entertainments and clothes tastes, home and furniture styles, choices of supermarket, food and wine, of holidays, hobbies, etc.

To these people there can only ever be one way of living: and it needs the very latest and most powerful portable-telephone, eavesdropping 'speaker and laptop loaded with the latest MS "bloatware". If you don'ty have these you don't exist , or at best do but are insignificant and second-rate, by your own fault. Some of the Victorians used to think poverty self-inflicted. I wonder if this attitude is rising again but based on the transistor not the farthing.

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Windy –

You raise a looming future problem. BT wants to replace in the next few years, all copper landline connections to premises with optical-fibre, meaning any computer and landline telephone will need a permanently-on mains electricity supply. Landline telephones so far have always relied on a supply from the exchange, so are usually immune from power-cuts. If your future home 'phone is unuseable and your portable 'phone battery goes flat in a lengthy power-cut, you are out of contact. Oh, and your home heating is off too, of course, even if you still have gas-fired central-heating. (Don't tell Miss Thunderbox.)

John –

Most such systems probably work very well within very narrow limits, but as I hint at above, cannot cope with anything outside them. If the system gives any telephone alternative at all, and assuming you can actually reach anyone within an hour or so, the staff cannot stray outside those limits either because the designers have not considered that possibility. The Enquiry staff are just a human "Frequently Asked Questions" list given no initiative. Naturally too, we all know that "I'll ring back" is almost always a blatant lie.

Many organisations refuse to publish any contact details: use their limited web-site and/or phone number, or nothing. Stops you writing to their Directors, stating your problem, requesting help and asking why their staff cannot help.

Norfolk Boy, Oven Man –

With respect you are missing the point. Microsoft designed 'Word' and 'Excel' and their .doc and .xls files and made them transmissable; and Microsoft has a near monopoly. It was always possible to exchange readable and indeed edit files (unless locked by the author) provided both parties have the same MS Office programmes, even if slightly different editions.

If MS thinks .docx and .xlsx files the more common now it is because MS itself has designed and enforced those new file-types.

It was never, and should not now be, necessary to have to obtain any third-part translator to be able to exchange files in useable forms between two computers using the files' own creation-programme in the same operating-system, even if the OS and programme editions differ a bit.

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Diogenes –

Burning ships? I'll have you know we guinea-pigs are not rats and do not infest ships. We even have wider vocabularies than rats, andd when really excited, can chirrup like injectors with air-leaks!

Thank you Norfolk Boy.

Please, I realise you were trying to help me by suggesting solutions. I thank you for that and I am sure they work.

My point was they should not be necessary because they are solutions to problems created by Microsoft needlessly messing around with its own inventions that had generally always worked well.

As I said earlier, I have seen no convincing, genuine reason for MS making damaging changes to its own software; leading me to assume merely some hidden commercial gain.

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Peter, Steve –

I can underdtand and appreciate those potential problems of living without the Internet and "smart" 'phone entirely. The system are pushing me further and further away, my mother who died some 12 years ago would have been totally abandoned. She struggled enough after our Dad died 10 years previously because he'd managed all the bills and she only ever used cash and the occasional cheque, not even a debit card. Luckily, as well as help from the family, their bank had a sympathetic local manager who discreetly gave her his office number to bypass the call-centre blockades. She had no portable 'phone, had never used a computer. I fear nowadays a lot of these Internet-bound organisations would be inaccessible to her, or would ignore her except to demand money "with menaces" .

I signed for Internet banking. It worked the first time, when I registered then moved some money in the same session; but failed the next. To Hell with it then. Luckily my bank still has a town-centre branch.

I have no " smart" telephone either. Tried one: neither use nor ornament. Replaced it with a basic instrument that is a voice-telephone first and foremost. (Not as an auxiliary function, as on that LG2017.)

Sometimes I am asked for my portable 'phone's number. I can never remember it. Usually admitting truthfully that I would have to look it up (and often, do not have the 'phone with me) is enough for it to be not needed anyway!

My PC runs on MS WIN-7 Pro and does everything I need – as did WIN XP; although that, on what is now a spare PC, might not take my edition of TurboCAD.

I had a quick look to see what is about, should I have to spend £*hundreds better spent on tools and steel – or repairing my house roof.

My rough guide, a major chain's catalogue, is an utter mess: pretty pictures, advertising hyperbole, confusing prices; but scanty information. It sells computers all with WIN-10 but no useful programmes, and implies the more powerful ones can be "up-graded" (i.e. "up-dated" ) to WIN-11. The programmes themselves, under the MS "Office" label, seem sold by annual subscriptions but this being unclear, and the prices being 1-year only, suggest hiding something. 'Access' has disappeared, the so-called 'Cloud' seems a default. Would the older forms of Office work on these W10+ PCs?

In fact, as when I bought my present PC, I would go to an independant retailer carrying perhaps a smaller range but far more likely to help me choose the best for me.

I wonder when Greta's Little Helpers are going to twig the appalling, rapidly growing waste of materials and fuel the entire IT industry is enforcing?

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I doubt the UK Government would decide that that authentication method can be ignored, because its use is likely to be far more under the control of the "international" (i.e. mainly American) IT and money trades, than by the EU. If anything, any such EU ruling would have been at the conglomerates' bidding.

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I think you sum up what I see as very worrying developments whose eventual end will be a deeply divided society.

Divided not by any of the traditional barriers like "class" , sex, race, religion, political allegiance – nor by money directly, although that is contributory.

Divided instead by ownership of a very narrow, very limited set of equipment and software; dictating one's ability to meet an ever-diminishing choice in how to perform simple, everyday tasks like communicating with other people, paying bills, travelling, or even shopping.

I do wonder what Microsoft actually does. It seems to keep bringing out new versions of Windows in a sort of arms-race with the computer manufacturers, and some of both is probably to cope with ever-greater demands to use a home computer as an entertainment-centre; yet does not seem to improve anything!

I used Excel for years at work, from about WIN- to WIN-XP, and it went through a silly phase with daft things like "Bubble Charts", yet could never grasp properly the concept of a polar graph, with 0º and 360º are the same point on a circular grid whose lines and labels can be edited properly! (The values were typically at 5º and even 3º intervals.)

My troubles with the ridiculous 'x' file suffix started when I was preparing for retirement and tried to send home from work, 'Word' documents pertaining to my pensions – and lunch-time Excel projects like change-wheel charts. The system converted them to the useless, unreadable '.—x' files.

Similarly, when on my model-engineering society committee. We circulated each other with our reports before each meeting. They arrived in all manner of formats including .docx and .pdf, preventing collating them neatly into a single document. Some were just plain unreadable.

The only translator available then was Adobe, but only for hire at about £40/month – nearly £500 a year! To hell with that rip-off for something probably worth < £100 one-off – but even free third-party translators should never be necessary.

I do not know if MS now embeds .pdf and .—x translators within WIN-10 and 11. It invented these file-types, after all.

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I have considered Apple Mac, Linux etc as their users do say they are far superior to MS; but cannot afford anything Apple, and do not have the expertise to convert a WIN 7 Pro PC to Linux.

Nor do I know if either system would handle all my years' accumulations of many types of files made under MS and third-party programmes, and those programmes themselves. (Photo-editors, TurboCAD; many 'Excel' spreadsheets of which some are still active, 'Word' documents.)

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Far more serious though than the eccentricities of over-blown software is what is happening generally – a growing divide by which anyone who does not live 24-hours-a-day on a WIN-latest lap-top and "smart" – telephone, will be side-lined, ignored, neglected, treated as inferior, ignorant, worthless, best abandoned.

Dave –

Thank you! Actually it's worth looking at some your examples a lttle further.

Why would a judge ask who are the Rolling Stones (and I think also the Beatles)? This was pointed out to me nearer the time. By asking, they would be defined in the transcripts, because the judge knew that time does indeed move on, and anyone needing refer to the trial 100 or even 50 years hence will not want puzzling by loose historical ends.

Gas mantles and computers? Well, with the best will in the world no one is a soothsayer and when gas-mantles were The Thing, and electricity and reliable electric lamps were in their infancy. While the first computers were out of reach for all but the biggest companies and government services. None could have guessed what would happen to them.

The Lady Chatterley trial was different. There, the prosecuting barrister had not realised the world had moved on. The defence and jury had, and destroyed his case.

Incidentally my last girl-friend's father had been an architect and her mother still had his "pattern-book" of sample 1930s homes, from council estates to the plushest architect's-own mansions. Some of the mid-range, leafy-suburban, examples did show homes with rooms labelled "servants'" or "maid's" – the sort of Surrey pied-a-terre that highly-edumificated but very naive barrister would probably have known.

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You right we cannot stop the juggernaut. My beef though is with the juggernaut making life wilfully or accidentally harder than necessary because its driver will not pause and think. Possibly I could sort out the file-type problem, but by extra work that should never be necessary.

Similarly it should not be difficult to load a pod-cast – such difficulty is not inherent to pod-casts or the internet, but to incompetent web-site design. Ask its designers to create a lathe and they'd probably put the apron on the back.

Meanwhile I paid next year's car-tax this afternoon, not on-line but in the Post Office I had to visit anyway to post two Christmas cards abroad.

The less we use local services the sooner they will disappear – as the juggernaut wants of course – and then we will all bemoan the loss of local services.