Kristin Hall: The problem with going hi-tech

As the population grows, governments change and the economy continues its ever bumpy ebb and flow between wealth and deficit, we are told by politicians, the media and big time corporations that we live in an increasingly dynamic and variable world - an exciting environment full of life-changing, state-of-the-art gadgets that is transforming faster than ever.

Conveniently without the ability to transcend time we will never know whether this fantastically vague statement is in fact true or not.

We do however know one thing. No matter how earth-shattering the technology, it and old people do not go together.

I do not mean to be age-ist in the slightest. In the same way that Twitter-fiending 12-year-olds would struggle with morse code, fountain pens and complex embroidery so too do old people have about the same level of technological competency as a fetus.

This is not news to them. The oldies know it. A sizeable chunk of my working day is spent listening to furious monologues about how members of the Golden Days rest home can't operate their teletext. All of which must be transcribed and passed on to the teletext service because said furious oldies can't operate their email.

"I keep seeing a picture of a letter and hearing some kind of a dinging noise, something about an inward box? What is that? Can it fix the words on the television?"

We all know a member of the 65+ bracket that experiences meltdowns like this on a nearly daily basis. They are an entirely real and particularly vocal fraction of society. Funny then, that our own Prime Minister doesn't appear to know they exist.

It's a pipeline plan at this stage, but word in the hive is that interacting with Government agencies is about to get even harder.

That satisfyingly generic letter from an MP's PR office saying they appreciate your feedback? The thrilling ride of being passed on to "the appropriate person to deal with that question" while staff hold an emergency meeting to address the fact they don't have an appropriate person to deal with the question.

That breezy 45 minutes of listening to My Heart Will Go On in the meantime?

That my friends, is about to get deliciously, thrillingly more technical.

As part of an electrifying leap into the new age Mr Key has been in talks with global search engine phenomenon Google about creating software services to "cut costs and improve the efficiency" of public services. More specifically, the plan includes a "revamp" of the way we communicate with our local government agencies, a process that may now be done via smartphone.

Mr Key is thoroughly optimistic about the plan, stating the move will create a benchmark for cheaper more efficient public services. The question then has to be asked, and forgive my ignorance, what is a smartphone?

The smartness of the smartphone seems to surface in the fact that it goes beyond the capabilities of an actual phone, becoming more of a GPS-capable, web-browsing, video-taping thingy. I know few people with smartphones, the select group fortunate enough to own them are more preoccupied with playing Fruit Ninja than interacting with government agencies.

I have owned a cellphone for the past 10 years of my life, thanks to various water-related activities I have been through my fair share of replacements. Yet it is also safe to say the cost of such phones has remained a seriously minor expenditure in the grand scheme of things. My latest model cost $49 from Countdown. Its only non-communicative function is that it's heavy enough to double as a paperweight on a windy day.

How then do Mr Key and his posse of iPhone-toting MPs expect anyone, let alone the more senior among us to embrace the idea of shooting a quick message off to the Justice Department on a device that looks like it fell off the Apollo 13?

I hate to discourage progress but the cynical part of me says any kind of reliance on internet as a public service provider is less about cost cutting and more about avoiding calls from Nana Muriel asking if there's a department for teletext. If she waits long enough, there probably will be, providing she doesn't call and ask them actual questions though. Non-communicative communication is key.