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I remember my amazement the first time I was given an office mobile phone for a foreign trip. It was so big a modern budget airline would have refused it as hand baggage. It weighed a ton.

However there I was on a Swiss mountainside when it rang and the office were asking how my filming was going.

How on earth had it tracked me down to the middle of nowhere and a foreign nowhere at that? Tell kids today and they'll laugh.

I fear we are about to enter a similar brave new world in TV technology. We are going .

There is something very reassuring about ejecting a tape and placing it on your dedicated office shelf. You can glance at it knowing a hard day's slog has been captured and it will be there when you come to edit the film.

This week we visited the production office of .

Former Inside Out colleagues from Yorkshire had split off to produce the popular series from a hanger at .

They follow the daily lives of the air ambulance.

Video journalists use the lightest possible cameras, but everything they shoot ends up on tiny little disks hardly bigger than a builder's thumb nail.

It's the next generation of TV technology and it's heading our way. I'm in a bit of denial as all I see is 101 ways to lose your material.

Here are just a few:

• Accidentally dropped into a cup of boiling tea


• Left in a "safe" place and forgotten


• Placed in a jeans pocket and put through the washing machine

My cutting edge colleagues assure me if you are disciplined all will be well. But once you download it onto a computer we all know the perils that await.

Who hasn't pressed delete and regretted it? ....tried to open a file and found it has corrupted in some way? .... had a computer crash and take all contents with it?

I'm no , but with everything being miniaturised and digitised we all sign up to a blind trust in technology that we as individuals have no way of controlling.

When an old car broke down, I could open the bonnet and have a fair chance of making it go again. These days it's all electronics and a garage is the only solution.

I welcome the higher quality and lower cost that newer technology brings. I just wish it was more tactile and failsafe.

In my loft I have vinyl records, reel to reel tape and the odd VHS cassette, but nothing to play any of them on. Old habits die hard in a world of constant change.