Carol’s Column

My remote cellphone is confusing me

"Dammit, my cellphone is dead," I muttered to my husband. "I can't get through to my mother."

"Let me try," he said.

"Well, of course it's not working," he chortled. "This is the TV remote control."

"The TV remote?" I answered with disbelief.

"Yes, the small, black remote control we use to switch on the telly," he said.

"The small black instrument with a short aerial sticking out of it is commonly known as a cellphone.

"They look similar, but in fact perform different functions and this is the TV remote control. You cannot phone your mother using the TV control."

"You don't have to talk slowly," I snapped. "I am not a cretin."

To his credit, he declined to answer.

Well, anyone can make a mistake.

If one's in a hurry, there's not that much difference between a cellphone and a TV control.

But I realised I was losing it when I tried to open the garage door with the TV control. It's all this technology, it's getting to me.

I remember my mother telling me the story of how, sometime during the 1920s, my grandfather acquired the first motor car in Karlsruhe.

My mother's family lived in this bustling German town on the Rhine.

She remembers what a thrill it was when the car arrived.

And how everyone, including my mother, regarded the horseless carriage as "a miracle".

She still has pictures of my grandparents in the front, herself, a small girl, sitting proudly alone on the back seat with a grin stretching from ear to ear.

The vehicle is grand, spacious, open-topped with large narrow wheels and a gear lever on the outside, enabling the driver to change up and down with ease.

"Who would have thought," she asked, "that soon everyone would drive a car?"

Although, to tell the truth, she still prefers a motorbike. "Easier to park," she says.

Since then, so far have we advanced during the past 80 years, it's not improbable that space travel will soon become the means of getting around.

And it's just a question of time before we are all driving cars with GPS devices to ensure we can plot our destination exactly. Apparently some advanced cars already have them built in.

And it is not inconceivable that each car will have a remote control button enabling you to plot your route by GPS, then drive you there as you sit back in comfort.

In other words, driverless cars.

Meanwhile, back to my cellphone/TV remote control confusion.

Why doesn't a creative, innovative soul invent the ultimate all-in-one electronic control?

One that can be used to open a garage door, a locked car, switch on the engine, open security gates drive, set the burglar alarm, switch on the TV, change channels and, above all, be used as a cellphone?

Surely in an age that created a jet plane, a space rocket, a pasta-making machine, a garlic peeler and a dishwasher, this is not too much to ask?

In a millennium of organ transplants, cloning and sophisticated telecommunications, it should be easy.

According to my good friend Herbert (husband of my good friend Betty), who is known for his great interest in electronic gadgets, it's just a question of time before we all carry a stamp-sized control that does it all.

Meanwhile, one advance -I have discovered my cellphone which is not yet WAP programmed (whatever that might mean) can however switch on our water sprinkler system.

It works this way, I phone home and say to my spouse who has arrived before me: "Switch on the sprinkler system."

Although this method is not fully automatic, it works every time.

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