When will it be the future?

My parents called me on the weekend and they want Ben and I to hook up with Skype so they can live by their weeny camera on their antiquated computer in Canberra while soaking up live pictures of me in various unglamourous late-pregnancy outfits (pre June) and, more emphatically, so they can spend most of their waking moments post June staring teary eyed at our newborn baby.

This is all great.

I don't have any problem with this, in fact, I'm thinking that instead of buying one of those walkie talkies you put in your baby's room so that you can hear them spit the dummy 12 times per night, I can just set up the camera on the computer, hook up to Skype and go and sleep while Mum and Dad keep an eye on the baby. Lovely.

So anyway, I left the phone conversation thinking 'wow, the future', my parents are taking on video calls and they're the ones encouraging me to get with the digital age. Things are really coming along, I thought. Technology really is making our lives easier and potentially more exciting, I thought.

Well, I was wrong.

I then had a moment with the television. A difficult moment.

Until I am able to work our television with ONE REMOTE CONTROL I refuse to buy into the tech craze.
I tried to turn the channel on the tv yesterday while Ben was out and the screen turned to a screaming static mess. I pushed another button which I was sure would lead me back to where I had just been but NOTHING HAPPENED. I had obviously come so far along the dark forest path that there was no turning back. The crumbs I thought would take me back to the mildly interesting documentary on the Russian violinist, had disappeared.
I was apoplectic. Livid.
It took me a very long time to calm down and breathe through the violent urges.

Why is it so hard to design a tv and a tv remote that turns your tv on and off and changes the channel and adjusts the volume? That's all I want. Is it really so hard?
There are about 25 buttons on our new remote control that don't mean anything to me. There are buttons there that I will NEVER need to use. We have six remote controls on our tiny little coffee table and not one of them obviously belongs to the machine it's supposed to control. Totally maddening.

Sigh.

Luckily Ben came home. Diffused the bomb. Cleared the air. Made me go for a walk. Rationally explained to me why there needs to be a separate remote for the tv and for the video and for the DVD.
Then the Simpson's episode where Homer becomes the sanitation commissioner came on and I felt the tension melt.
For a while there it was touch and go.

I think my technological expectations have been unrealistically raised by my new obsession with Battlestar Galactica.