From thingamajigs to Internet of Things

IF, LIKE me, you resort to a combination of nonsense (‘whatchamacallit’ and ‘thingamajig’) and expletives when dealing with gadgetry, there’ll be some comfort in the findings this week that one in four of us can’t use our tech devices properly.

A rather benign survey, released by a technical brand on Thursday, told us what we already know — most of us don’t read user manuals and are pretty clueless when it comes to the intricacies of Bluetooth and the cloud.

However, the real issue with technology is not that people can’t use it — but that they can. For one recent and chilling example, consider Volkswagen’s diesel deception. The car manufacturers fitted 11 million cars with software that sensed when a car was being tested and then activated equipment to reduce emissions.