Everything has a shorter shelf life now Ð even the shelves

Date Published: {J}

Imagine if you treated your marriage like your phone – and every time a new slimmer model with a greater capacity came out, you were at the front of the queue.

The only difference is you’d probably be looking for one that didn’t have as big a memory as the last one; a model that will never bring up things that happened in the past.

Or the ladies would be beating down the doors for the new iMan, which would have a washing up app as standard and a guarantee that he’ll bounce back if you let him fall.

Just because there’s one extra facility on the new version, would you tie yourself into a new longer contract – not least because you’ve already signed up on a contract for life.

But we live in a disposable world now, and while the doomsayers who predicted that the arrival of divorce would herald the end of marriage were wrong, in every other facet of life, we no longer feel the need to invest time, money or energy in having them repaired.

We just replace them and forget they ever existed.

There was a time when one of the best jobs in a small town was that of a television repair man; he might not have sold many flat screen surround sound models, but he knew how to replace a dead tube.

These days you’re as likely to find a shop that fixed televisions as you are to find one that sells loose cigarettes or biscuits – indeed one can presume that those 60 inch, hang-on-the-wall screens haven’t space for a tube even if you wanted one.

Time was, when the one telly in the house was broken, it was taken to the repair shop and the family had to talk to each other for a week or two while the new tube was fitted and the picture filling the screen again – as opposed to the white dot it transmitted at the time it was taken away.

These days, most homes have numerous televisions anyway so it wouldn’t be a case of looking at the empty corner where the box used to be – but more to the point, nobody repairs them anyway.

Some families spend their time secretly praying that the old box gives up the ghost so that they can get a new surround-sound 60 inch version with Saorview and HD technology thrown in for good measure.

The 3D TV is only in its infancy, but already you can see the day when the family sits down, puts on the Roy Orbison specs and enjoys the world of three-dimensional movies without the slightest interaction with anyone else in the room.

This week the world of technology held its breath for the arrival of the new iPhone 5, a gadget so groundbreaking that it will leave owners of iPhone 3’s and 4’s feeling like they are riddled with leprosy were they to produce their pre-historic device in public.

Ditto, the people at Amazon unveiled not one, but three, new Kindles last week, allowing you to now read your black and white ebooks in full colour and to download television shows that you can watch on the couch while the rest of the family enjoy that new tubeless TV that hangs where the picture of the crying boy used to be over the mantelpiece.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.