The wonders of new technology 

 My entire business, with the help of the best technological invention since sliced bread – my 3G thingummyjig – is done at the speed of light via e-mail. My banking is done over the Internet and even my old trusted family photo album is now on a compact disk. I read books on my Kindle e-reader which, when I finish one, I can download another for far less than the bookstore price in one minute flat, even if I am sitting in Mongolia personally checking to see whether or not my phone got the weather right.

 Not a piece of paper in sight. Except in the lavatory, of course. I mean, surely that is one place it doesn’t make sense – either from a practical or hygienic point of view – to get rid of paper. Or so I thought, until I visited Japan a few years ago at the invitation of the Sony Corporation, to have a look at all the mind-boggling, clever-tech products it would be putting on the market. The first high-tech marvel that took my breath away, both literally and figuratively, wasn’t in the Sony research and development department but in the bathroom of my hotel in Yokohama – a paperless lavatory.

 I duly plonked myself down on the heated seat and then immediately unplonked myself back into standing position when it
flushed automatically. I gingerly seated myself again and started studying the electronic control panel on the side of the lavatory bowl. Which didn’t make sense because it was all in Japanese and I couldn’t access Google Translate because I had no cellphone signal due to all buildings in Yokohama being shrouded in steel cages to prevent them falling over during earthquakes...

 Anyway, by the time I had finished doing what came naturally, and in the complete absence of the usually ubiquitous roll of lavatory paper, I twiddled button A then pushed button B. A soft whirr heralded the arrival of a small tube into the bowl and next thing, my nethers were being magically cleaned with a spray of warm water. I should have left the settings as they were instead of experimenting because the difference between “soft spray” and “high pressure enema” was marginal, to say the least.

 The sphincter muscle is not designed to withstand temperatures of 2 000 degrees centigrade, which I am sure is no exaggeration. Nor was the human intestinal system designed to be able to absorb the equivalent water pressure of that great big 50-metre high fountain in the middle of Lake Geneva without much eye-watering and screaming. Eventually, I got it right and decided that this was indeed the way to go. It made much more sense than using paper. The only thing that confused me, though, was the lack of a drying button. For the life of me, I couldn’t find one. I tried various combinations of button A and B along with lever # and a sort of square whatsit with “!” written on it.

 All I got was a more scalded sphincter and a couple of doses of Geneva power douches. I gave up and had to hop around the room in squatting position for five minutes to allow evaporation to take its course. Which did something nasty to one of my legs. This gave me time to contemplate the incredible changes in technology. How business would be dependent upon broadband. And how, in the future, there would be a massive convergence of all those things we take for granted every day. Our computers would become television screens, our telephones everything from GPS navigators to PDAs and remote controls.

 High-speed modems and fibre optics would allow us to use our cellphones to video a wedding in Johannesburg, while across the world friends and relatives would be seeing everything live and in full colour simultaneously on their phones or iPads. We will be able to download full-length movies direct from Hollywood in about five minutes.

Two things my visit to Japan taught me:

The future is all about broadband and connectivity. It is not an option but a necessity for any country wanting to be globally competitive. Access to information and far-flung friends and family will be instantaneous. The humble telephone will become the vital nucleus of everything we do.

 The second thing I learnt was that it is the easiest thing in the world to pull a hamstring by hopping around a room trying to dry your backside. ▲

 Chris Moerdyk