Have you ever stopped and thought about how tech has invaded our lives and changed how we listen to music, read, watch telly and live our lives? I am not saying tech is bad, far from it, it has made many aspects of my life easier. I can now write and publish my own blog which is so much more fun than writing in a diary. However, there are areas where it is costing me unnecessary money for things I will never own and just lately, with the cost of living going up and up, I’m beginning to wonder if I, like millions of others, have been sucked into a reliance on the convenience and expanse of it all whilst lining the pockets of big supercompanies.

One area where it has improved my life is reading which I have enjoyed from before starting school. Not that I think for one minute tech should replace books because the feel and smell of a book can evoke long forgotten memories and feelings which is can’t be replicated by an iPad or e-reader. Throughout my early childhood I enjoyed the weekly trips to the main library in Nottingham with my grandmother; an avid reader who could get through a stack of books in a very short time. I loved the imposing ornate Victorian building, the stone stairway with brass bannisters leading up to the adult lending library, the dull, khaki coloured metal shelving and the smell of the books with an undertone of floor polish. It wasn’t long before I was delving into the wonders of the children’s library reached via a stout, khaki coloured door and down a flight of creaking stairs. There was always a sense of hush as I tried unsuccessfully not to make it squeak as I walked across it. I would choose my books, get them stamped and hurry up to my grandmother where I would sit and read until she had done. As an adult I had shelves upon shelves of books from oft re-read classics to throwaway paperbacks. Alas most of those paperbacks are now long gone and the remaining books are, for the most part, kept for their sentimental value and are very rarely opened. Mind you, if I tried reading my 1973 copy now it would probably fall apart. I do continue to use my first edition Witch’s Handbook as it has the best kneebone biscuit recipe within its pages. I was already downloading my music so when in 2009 I discovered a new innovation, e-books, it was odds on I’d be hooked. I had for many years been buying my books online from Amazon so when they moved onto ebooks and an app for my iPhone I was soon downloading my first ebook. It got even better with the iPad.  As with my music, I liked the convenience of being able to take my whole library of books wherever I went. Plus buy a new book even when I was away on some exotic holiday with no access to a book shop selling English language books. Ebook technology has also given me access to books I might not otherwise have been able to read as organisations like Project Gutenberg have digitised thousands of out of print books and given them a new lease of life.

In many respects it has improved the music scene by making music more accessible. My dad was a great lover of music and had a shelf full of vinyl records from classical long play albums to jazz singles which he would play on a blue Dansette record player. He encouraged both my sister and myself to appreciate all styles of music. People built vast record collections and I still have a few of my favourite singles and a couple of albums from my teens along with some of my dad’s collection, fondly remembered from my childhood. But these collections were far from portable. By the early 70s I had a “portable” cassette player; it was still huge and weighed a ton; and was listening to music on cassette tapes, mostly recorded from Radio Luxembourg which played a lot of stuff the BBC didn’t. The really cool thing about these cassettes was that car radio manufacturers began to incorporate a slot for the cassette. Oh the joys of the jammed tape in the middle of a journey! Needless to say none of those tapes survived. The dominance of vinyl and tape came to an almost grinding halt with the advent of the CD in the 1980s. With very little  chance of major scratching or unravelling they were practically indestructible and with their portable players I could listen to my music anywhere for as long as the batteries lasted. So now, alongside our decent collection of vinyl we had an ever increasing collection of CDs, most of which now reside in our Wurlitzer juke box until we convert it to Bluetooth. And this was the accepted state of things until the advent of the internet for all; the wonders of which I discovered in 1997 when I completed an IT module for my Cert Ed; and MP3 players onto which you could download music, although storage was limited. Then in 2001 Apple introduced the iPod and transformed our music collections for ever. Although it wasn’t until October 2006 that I bought my first iPod; for a bargain price from a tech shop in Hong Kong; and from that day on I have been an Apple devotee. I could now go anywhere in the world and take my entire library of uploaded and downloaded music with me. Then, a year later, in the November of 2007, I fell hopelessly in love. On a rare shopping trip with Paul to Meadowhall we were heading for the food court which took us past the O2 shop and there it was. The first iPhone. Out of curiosity more than anything else we wandered in to have a look. It was sleek, felt oh so good in my hand and; best of all, with its applications rather than umpteen layers of menus; it was Leonie proof, everything was at my fingertips. And even better I could download my music to the phone. Yes, I did go home one of those new fangled iPhones.

As with music and books it wasn’t long before both Apple and Amazon were revolutionising the way we watched TV and film with the ability to download films and tv shows. Through the early 1960s, in the UK, we had only two tv channels, BBC and ITV. Programmes were only broadcast from early evening to midnight. Daytime broadcasts were for schools and colleges with the exception of a lunchtime slot for Watch With Mother. And everything was in black and white. I remember the excitement in our house when we got our first colour tv in 1968 because Dad wanted to watch the Olympics in colour. Very soon everything was being broadcast in colour and most people had ditched their black and white tv sets for colour and we now had a whopping three channels until 1983 when we got Channel 4. By the end of the eighties satellite tv was becoming a thing bringing us even more channels to choose from along with cable tv; which had been available in the USA for years and another new concept, on demand viewing.

And back then, if you wanted to watch a recent film you went to the cinema or watched whichever oldie the BBC or ITV were airing that Sunday afternoon. Then in the late 70s a new concept came along, the video rental library. One such shop opened in our town which prompted my father in law to buy his first VHS device. If I remember rightly one of the first films we rented was a rather dreadful Japanese film called “Shogun Assassin” which, at the time we thought was brilliant. It really isn’t! The added bonus of the VHS system was that I could buy blank tapes and set it to record my favourite programmes when we were unable to watch them live which meant we could go on holiday for two weeks and not have to miss an episode of Dr Who, I could just binge watch when I got home. The downside, as with the tape cassette, was it’s propensity to get jammed in the machine and the hours spent unravelling and manually rewinding chewed up tape. So when the DVD it was welcomed with open arms in our house and a new device was purchased. Over the years, as with my books, I built up a veritable library but in the grand scheme of things both formats were fairly short lived and became practically obsolete when Amazon and Apple both introduced the ability to download a film to a compatible device. My first ever video download from iTunes was “Porterhouse Blue” in 2010. All those tapes and dvds I collected are now stashed in boxes collecting dust.

Which brings us up to the streaming age which provides us with 24/7 access to almost every film or tv show ever made via a plethora of streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney and Apple TV. Even our own independent broadcasters have got in on the act and now offer a paid version to get rid of adverts. And now the BBC; which is still demanding an exorbitant annual subscription (licence fee); is asking to expand that licence to include charging us for the right to watch streaming services on top of what we already pay cor those services. And there have been rumblings about a broadband tax being included; again on top of our broadband fees; which would mean they would be able to restrict our use of airwaves and bandwidths of any form. It wouldn’t be so insulting if they were providing the value for money they claim whilst providing very poor programmes these days. The BBC aside, many of today’s streamers also have stakes in tv and film production companies and are now producing their own content; much of it of equally poor quality; and it’s like they are all competing to see who can turn out the highest number of shit tv shows and films in a year. Consequently I can now spend half my evenings doomscrolling through thousands of viewing options before plumping for some second rate cop-cum-buddy show with a script written by AI where I have to wade through 26 soporific episodes of bad acting, police stupidity and ever increasingly unbelievable plot lines to get to the denouement, which turns out to be a cliffhanger to make me want to watch the next season. And to watch the next season I have got to pay the subscription fee, only to find the show has been cancelled due to poor ratings. Which brings me back to my thinking.

We are in the era of subscribing to everything but owning nothing. Back in the good old pre Virgin/HMV superstore days I would trot down to the nearest record department or trendy independent shop with my mates and buy a vinyl 45rpm single for around 7/6d (35p); it became a whopping 50p after decimalisation; or a long play (LP) album for a couple of quid after shutting ourselves away in a soundproof booth to listen to a few tracks first to see if we liked more than one song. When VHS tape and DVD formats arrived on the scene the record shops soon added them to their shelves which meant I could now go to HMV and Virgin or, later, log in to Amazon and buy my favourite films and tv shows as well as my music. The thing was, I bought the single, album, CD, video or DVD once and they belonged to me, they were mine to keep forever to listen to or watch as often as I wanted. Well, until the vinyl got scratched, the tape became so degraded or the CD/DVD became so scuffed with use it was no longer viewable. The very act of going out of the house and into town to purchase or rent these items meant I was interacting with like minded people rather than sitting in my bubble doomscrolling my way through the day.  Even in the early days of media downloading I bought and owned that copy of the downloaded item. Nowadays I am required to pay a separate subscription to each provider which, even when I get a half price offer, mounts up to a fair amount of money leaving my bank account with the stinger being I don’t actually own any of the music, shows and films I am paying for. Although I do manage to cut my costs by opting in and out of the various services on a month by month basis.

In fact, there is very little these days that doesn’t rely on fleecing me for a monthly cut of my bank account. One of my hobbies is photography and I really enjoy the editing process but where I once bought and owned the licence to use my Photoshop/Lightroom software which I had to manually uploaded to my computer I am now forced to pay a hefty monthly subscription to Adobe for a lifetime licence if I want all the updates; some of which don’t improve the product at all. Unfortunately I haven’t found anything yet I’m happy to use instead with so I guess I’ll keep forking out. It’s the same all over the internet, useful sites from recipes to shopping (Amazon Prime), travel to photography (Adobe) and gaming (Xbox and PlayStation) are all asking for that monthly subscription, for me to pay through the nose for the privilege of not owning what I am paying for. I will admit that there are a few sites I subscribe to regularly but they tend to be small annual subscriptions to cover the cost of running the site which I am happy to accept but not to the extent of charging exorbitant monthly subscription fees for something which doesn’t change or is of minimal use. Recipe sites seem to be the worse, I mean, how many variations on the basic recipe for beef stew and dumplings or apple pie can there be? And if you need to charge then charge me per recipe because I might only visit your site once for that one recipe and I don’t want to be inundated with hundreds of recipes ranging from the mediocre to “WTF is this?” that I’m never going to make. The really daft thing about this subscription lark is that I could charge you as my reader a fee to read my blog but would you be willing or stupid enough to cough your hard earned dosh up to read my tosh or would you tell me to go away in no uncertain terms? I have, thus far, resisted any temptation to subscribe to Amazon Unlimited, on top of the fee for Prime, which is nothing more than an online lending library full of less than inspiring books, and they are free.

I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s time to bow out of the subscription lifestyle, dust off my vinyl records, CDs and DVDs and start buying stuff to own again. But here’s the rub; can I really manage without Netflix, Spotify and all the rest now or am I in so deep I will get withdrawal symptoms if I try. Although with a Cyber Doomsday on the horizon; according to the current government; I might have to!