My friend Olivia bought a new telephone and dictaphone last week. She took them home and looked at the instructions. They were in gobbledegook. She could barely understand a word about the million possible settings, options and actions, except for one rather offensive statement in the phone manual: “People with mental problems should not attempt to achieve success with this product.”

She had no mental problems until she bought these products. We tried the dictaphone out together, but the most important explanatory diagram was obliterated by the barcode, which we had to steam off over the kettle, and the written instructions were a mystery.

“You’re just two faffing women,” grunted Fielding, from the dark ages. “It’s a male domain.” But he’s wrong. Olivia showed the instructions to a competent male chum, who did no better. He could teach Olivia how to transmit interviews and do all sorts of technical things, but could he understand the manual? No, he could not.

Can anyone understand these ghastly manuals? Back in 1989, a senior executive at Ford Motor Company – a man – wanted to reset the clock in his car, studied his owner’s manual, but was stumped. He was not alone. Even then, “growing numbers of psychologists and linguists spen[t] their days thinking about the incomprehensible instructions and unmanageable manuals that accompany the technological revolution.”

They didn’t know their luck. Post-revolution, our manuals are written in even more complex crap-speak. But don’t worry, people of any gender. It’s the language that’s rubbish, not you. My friend Mavis, a fearfully clever professor, cannot understand her digital camera handbook, and neither can her stepson. I cannot grasp the National Curriculum, my front door-bell instructions or most forms of written pruning instructions – unless someone shows me how. This is the secret to understanding technology, knitting, teaching, cooking, car-clocks, recorders or the off-side rule: only a person demonstrating can help, not a deranged manual.

I suggest live demonstrators in shops. That would mean thousands more jobs, apprentices and social interaction, less rage and humiliation, less paper, more trees – a better world altogether. If only I was in charge of everything.