Not the scream and run away Blair Witch Project kind of scared, just that "I can't deal with this...It's just so so complicated!" feeling. Do you know what I mean? An example: a few months back I bought a new mobile phone. Or what's called a cell phone in some countries. (The Germans call it a 'handy'. I don't mean the German word for 'handy'. Just a 'handy'.) Anyway, whatever you want to call it, I bought one, a little oyster-shell shaped thing that has a full-color screen and multiple language display functions and internet access and a camera and Bluetooth and so forth.

You can also make phone calls with it. Or send text messages.

Well, I got it home in its glossy packaging and after fitting the sim and checking that it all lit up when I opened it, I turned to the manual that came with it to find out how to take a picture. Believe it or not I had never taken a picture with a phone before and I wanted to try it.

The manual was 80 pages long. An 80-page manual. For a phone. That was scary enough already. It took me quite a while just to find what I wanted to know.

People, I'm not completely stupid but I couldn't work out how to do it. The 'simple instructions' just didn't make sense! I pressed what I thought was the right button -- at least it was the one the 80-page manual told me to press -- and I got a completely different screen from the one they said I would get. It just kept taking me into 'text messages'.

"No," I moaned. "No no noooooo...I don't want messages, you stupid phone, I want the camera!"

Do you ever talk to machines that won't cooperate with you?

It doesn't help. They don't seem to listen. Not even phones, that listen in on every word when you're talking to someone during a call.

After about half an hour I was ready to throw my brand-new phone across the room. Not a nice feeling, to be frustrated towards a violent act by a machine. So I took a break. Went and had a coffee, wandered around the room like a writer waiting for inspiration, let my heart rate return to something approaching normal, then went back and opened the phone again.

It has a lovely musical tone that issues forth every time you open or close it, a nice, thoughtful touch by the designers which I knew would soon irritate the hell out me, like a new song on the radio that you fall in love with and after three days you hate because they play it to death for payola...

I sincerely hoped there was a way to turn off that lovely musical welcoming tone, but right now I just wanted to TAKE A DAMNED PICTURE!!

I read the manual's instructions again. I read them with greater diligence than a spy memorising a code from a secret message before burning the scrap of paper and pounding it to ash. I followed those detailed but user-friendly instructions with the precision and care of a jet fighter pilot lining up for the critical landing manouver on the carrier deck.

The Text menu appeared. Again.

My reaction would have had me the spy caught and shot, or me the Top Gun pilot piling my plane into the deck.

What I said is unprintable. No vulgar, just unprintable. It was something like "Owrrrraaarrrghhhh!!!" but with more tone variations. And longer.

There is only one thing any mature, sensible, intelligent person can do in a case like this.

Ask a teenager.

In desperation, I called a friend and begged to speak to his 15-year-old daughter. (I figured she was young enough.) I explained the problem to her and she just laughed, "Oh, you just have to move the arrow button to point at the photo menu, then just click 'okay'."

Arrow button? Point to the photo menu? Click okay?

There was not a word in the 80-page manual about pointing any arrows at anything! I was sure. I'd read that manual like Holy Writ.

"Ummm...What's the arrow button?" I asked this child genius.

"Its the one in the middle with the teeny little arrows on it. Just press the side nearest the word 'photo' and it opens the menu, then just click the up or down arrows to do whatever you want. Then just press okay. It's in the middle of the arrow button," she informed me.

"How d- ...I mean, do you have the same phone?"

A giggle. "No, but they all work the same way, pretty much. It's really easy."

I peered at the phone more closely and realized that there were teeny little arrows on the button in the middle, arrows so small that I had simply not realized they were there. I took my glasses off and polished them, put them back, and tried what she had told me, holding my new phone in my right hand while she waited at the other end of the old phone I held in my left -- which didn't come with an instruction manual. Click. Main menu. Click. Photo menu! Click. Take Picture!!

Oh, joy! Oh bliss, oh wonder of the ages! I had learned the secret and a whole new world was opening to me! Thanking my mind's saviour I hung up the phone and proceeded to photograph everything in the room.

It was wonderful...

The point of this anecdote is that the makers of the phone had made an assumption that was false. They simply assumed that anyone buying their new phone would know about those 'teeny little arrows' and what to do with them, so they didn't bother mentioning them or their purpose in their Bl**dy user-friendly 80-page manual!

Their assumption was understandable. My original cell/mobile/handy was so old that it had a tiny chimney to let the smoke from the miniature coal-fired boiler that powered the teeny weeny steam engine inside it to escape. My new one was as far removed from it as the Wright brothers' Flyer is from a Space Shuttle, and the maker just didn't dream that anyone would be so far behind the times.

That's the problem these days. I'd had my old phone for way too long.

Six years, in fact.

Now I also have a new video camera -- and the manual is 120 pages long...

Oh, I almost forgot to ask! What are your experiences? Does new technology scare you/frustrate you sometimes? Please share and let us know!