Random Jottings on Technology

I heard once that today’s smart phones have more computing power than NASA had available for the first moon landing. That may be an urban myth, but there’s no doubt that the iPhone and its competitors like the Samsung Galaxy range or the BlackBerry are incredibly sophisticated computing and communication tools. They should probably be more realistically called multi-functional devices as actually making phone calls is almost just an afterthought and only a small part of their purpose. Accessing the internet using these hand-held devices, or through your computer at home or work means that news and information that is constantly updated is available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Twitter for instance can feed you scores from even the Ryman League in real-time. There is an iPhone app for Football Web Pages that will keep you up to date with the latest results and League tables from Steps One to Four of the non-League pyramid and of course most of us will exchange texts with fellow Boro supporters who can’t get to matches.

There is also now an iPhone app specifically for the Ryman League, providing news, results and league tables and allowing the user to select the club they support to personalise their view of the application. For non iPhone users here is apparently an Android app in the pipeline. Coverage on the internet, both on your home PC or smartphone, of Premier and Football League scores can be found from any number of sources and the ESPN Goals app allows you to see Premier League highlights as the games progress.

This is a far cry from the days, not so many years ago when, if you missed the reading of the classified football results in Sports Report at five o’clock, and you couldn’t get a Saturday evening paper, it might be Sunday morning before you could find out the results from the Football League, let alone non-League football. Indeed there were occasions when I first started supporting Romford that it might not be until the Romford Recorder came out on a Friday before I could learn how Boro had done in midweek or even the previous Saturday. In fact in the early days of the 1990’s there were a couple of Romford games that passed me by completely and which I wasn’t even aware were due to take place until I saw the result in the Recorder. Mind you the last of these was in November 1995 (a 6-0 win over East Ham United at Rush Green, in case you’re interested).

All this new technology is marvellous for keeping up to date with the news from non-League football in particular as the traditional media like the press, TV and radio devote very little space or air-time to the subject; indeed Twitter is a great source of news about football in general and the non-League game in particular. Twitter is however very much a double edged sword for individuals, if not for news organisations. Whereas the latter will bring you news and information, the former bring you their thoughts and opinions with an immediacy that makes one wonder if they actively put their brains in gear before committing their thoughts into the ether. When David Cameron remarked, as long ago as 2009 that “too many tweets might make a twat" he was referring to members of the Conservative party, but he may just as well have been aiming at professional footballers; I’m sure you can imagine who I’m talking about!

This piece first appeared in the programme for the Romford v. Potters Bar Town match in Ryman League Division One North on 3rd November 2012.