Some tech should stay lost
Or how, sometimes, you just need to accept you're a chump
The closest thing I have to a superpower is being hyper-careful of my stuff. This means I rarely lose or break something.
Yeah, it’s hardly super strength or laser eyes or an adamantium skeleton, but I’ll take what I get.
Saying that, you can probably guess what’s coming up next: I lost one of my favourite bits of tech.
This must be that “comeuppance” thing I hear people talking about.
Onto the story. While I was on my recent travels, I had a long stay in Berlin while working for IFA. Because exercise makes me “feel good” I took my heart rate monitor with me.
(Note: I’m a huge fan of training with a heart rate monitor, it’s something that has completely altered how I work out. I’ll write about this at some point in the future, so you’ve got that to look forward to.)
The model I use — the Polar Verity Sense — is lovely. It’s small and lightweight, and can either be connected to my Apple Watch or track my heart rate by itself.
Or should I say it was lovely. Because, somehow, I managed to lose it.
I have no idea how I misplaced my heart rate monitor. The only thing I can think of is that I accidentally threw it away when I was packing up my hotel room, because it’s been nowhere to be seen since.
Let me tell you, it’s incredibly galling to straight-up lose something like that under zero pressure.
I don’t have the classic excuse of being drunk or a cool tale like it slipped off while I was swimming the English channel or riding a rollercoaster or rescuing a puppy, it’s just… gone. No story, no moral, no grand narrative, just the empty feeling you get when something you used every single day is no longer there.
It’s like an old friend has just vanished. If that friend was a lifeless bit of plastic.
The loss of my heart rate monitor reminded me just how great Apple’s Find My feature can be.
Last year, I misplaced my AirPods (hold on, this “superpower” stuff seems pretty hollow now) and managed to find them again with Apple’s tracking feature. Yes, you guessed it, they were on the floor of my local cinema.
The company has made Find My a core part of its business, with the functionality appearing across more and more of its devices.
There’s a part of me that’d love to get this sort of tracking across all sorts of gadgets — I mean, how amazing would it be to know exactly where my heart rate monitor got to? And then Liam-Neeson-in-Taken it back from whoever now has it?
But, when you ponder what that sort of location access means, it becomes alluring.
AirTags have already started us on a slippery slope of untoward tracking, with Apple’s prestige and size effectively jumpstarting an entire industry. Do I want every bit of technology to be a potential spying tool? Meaning I can be tracked by multiple companies or people wherever I go, whether I take my phone or not?
To be honest? Not really. That doesn’t sound very cool at all.
There’s a sort of wisdom, then, in accepting that not everything can be perfect. Yes, I miss my heart rate monitor, but the solution isn’t great either; I don’t want to live in a world of smart, continually internet-connected devices that constantly track my movements.
When I really think about it, all I want is tech that does its job. No fancy features, just excellence at its main task — but this also means accepting that, sometimes, it may get lost.
Thankfully though, there’s a solution, and it’s all down to my second superpower: buying shit.
I can confirm I’ve exercised this to its full potential and I’m already in posession of a new heart rate monitor. Yeah, buying the same thing twice hurts, but the other alternatives? They’re worse.