Gratitude Monday: Assistive technology

I very often crab about technology—“hot” apps that are more style than substance solving extremely limited first-world problems (e.g., a valet parking app for those times when you can’t be arsed to find a parking space in San Francisco, or maybe Manhattan, but not many other places, and you’re perfectly willing to give complete strangers access to your credit card details and your car); arrogant subscription policies; crappy user experience.

So allow me a little space for a petty bit of personal gratitude: for the past couple of months I’ve had my first access to Netflix, along with a large (by my standards) TV. Even though I don’t think it does a great job of letting you find out what they actually have in their library, I’ve been ridiculously happy to be able to watch full seasons of Foyle’s War, cherry pick some favorite episodes of Quantum Leap and ferret out the occasional actual, you know, film.

The other night, in fact, I wallowed in one of my all-time best-loved rom-coms, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. What delight!

And I could pause it to run to the kitchen and top up my wine, fast-forward over parts I’m not wild about and rewind and re-view those I especially like.

Now, this is technology without a downside: on-demand video. And I say hurrah for it.