I hadn't thought about the disappearance of buttons and knobs but you're absolutely right, and I do miss those. Screens everywhere do feel cheap and low quality. I've been thinking of the Blackberry a lot recently, which I still maintain that along with the Nokia 3210, was one of the best phones ever made. A whole keyboard, made of BUTTONS, on your phone, it was a beautiful and functional phone, and had a good quality feel and weight to it. So many things feel cheaply made and poor quality now.
I've read both your posts and really hope you're right with all these Patrick.
Something else that bothers me more than anything in the last couple years is the disappearance of check out tills, and replacing them with those self-checkout machines. Living and working from home alone, having a chat with a check out assistant can sometimes be my only human interaction in a day. Regardless of whether or not the interactions are nice for people who are lonely, they're good for us in general. These are the type of interaction I've noticed we're losing almost overnight, connected to this hyper technology drive, and it's so depressing to me - although transparent of the stores, at least - to go into a shop, and not once have to speak to a human. On the odd occasion you do still get check out assistants, they ask for your name and email address before you can get your receipt. It's madness. Going shopping and making purchases is either no longer an interaction, or an opportunity for stores to collect our data. And soon I imagine price surging of products at certain hours of the day is going to be a thing.
I really, really hope that over the next few years we see people clawing back their offline time.
Thanks for reading, Zoe. I've got good news for you: the great self-checkout experiment at grocery stores and supermarkets may be coming to an end. Some major retailers are finding self-checkout more trouble than it's worth and getting rid of the systems. But I take your larger point: so much of the modern word seems determined to squeeze out every last iota of "efficiency" in their processes and services, to the detriment of actual human-to-human interaction. Efficiency may be a capitalist and market imperative, but it is not a human imperative, and in fact in many cases degrades the human experience. Thanks for reminding us of that.
I am so glad I came across your blog from your interview. I like your insight! and I have two comments: 1) the digital divide will be more about the privilege to disconnect than access seems fair, however I work in digital health and, sadly, there is a large part of the population that doesn't have access to virtual care due to devices/connectivity/digital literacy/etc and it has a detrimental impact on tech advancements in the sector. 2) Surgeon General’s warning to social media platforms is something I've been thinking about for a while. Or a 'dumbification' of phones, where nothing looks cool and shiny and doesn't compel you to look at things longer than you have to.
Good to see you here Barb. Yes, I certainly don't mean to suggest that the traditional perspective on the digital divide has been solved; that remains a challenge globally. And there are in fact quite a few independent but parallel efforts converging on the 'dumbification' of phones at the moment: from the proliferation of new but old-school-style flip phones to models that only include the basics — i.e. voice calls and text, and not much more. There are also lots of ways of temporarily dumbifying your phone to make it more difficult to use or less distracting or less eye-catching (e.g. switching to B&W, turning off notifications, apps that lock it after set times, etc. All of which are creative responses by both the marketplace and ordinary users to the problems we're encountering.
I hadn't thought about the disappearance of buttons and knobs but you're absolutely right, and I do miss those. Screens everywhere do feel cheap and low quality. I've been thinking of the Blackberry a lot recently, which I still maintain that along with the Nokia 3210, was one of the best phones ever made. A whole keyboard, made of BUTTONS, on your phone, it was a beautiful and functional phone, and had a good quality feel and weight to it. So many things feel cheaply made and poor quality now.
I've read both your posts and really hope you're right with all these Patrick.
Something else that bothers me more than anything in the last couple years is the disappearance of check out tills, and replacing them with those self-checkout machines. Living and working from home alone, having a chat with a check out assistant can sometimes be my only human interaction in a day. Regardless of whether or not the interactions are nice for people who are lonely, they're good for us in general. These are the type of interaction I've noticed we're losing almost overnight, connected to this hyper technology drive, and it's so depressing to me - although transparent of the stores, at least - to go into a shop, and not once have to speak to a human. On the odd occasion you do still get check out assistants, they ask for your name and email address before you can get your receipt. It's madness. Going shopping and making purchases is either no longer an interaction, or an opportunity for stores to collect our data. And soon I imagine price surging of products at certain hours of the day is going to be a thing.
I really, really hope that over the next few years we see people clawing back their offline time.
Thanks for reading, Zoe. I've got good news for you: the great self-checkout experiment at grocery stores and supermarkets may be coming to an end. Some major retailers are finding self-checkout more trouble than it's worth and getting rid of the systems. But I take your larger point: so much of the modern word seems determined to squeeze out every last iota of "efficiency" in their processes and services, to the detriment of actual human-to-human interaction. Efficiency may be a capitalist and market imperative, but it is not a human imperative, and in fact in many cases degrades the human experience. Thanks for reminding us of that.
I am so glad I came across your blog from your interview. I like your insight! and I have two comments: 1) the digital divide will be more about the privilege to disconnect than access seems fair, however I work in digital health and, sadly, there is a large part of the population that doesn't have access to virtual care due to devices/connectivity/digital literacy/etc and it has a detrimental impact on tech advancements in the sector. 2) Surgeon General’s warning to social media platforms is something I've been thinking about for a while. Or a 'dumbification' of phones, where nothing looks cool and shiny and doesn't compel you to look at things longer than you have to.
Good to see you here Barb. Yes, I certainly don't mean to suggest that the traditional perspective on the digital divide has been solved; that remains a challenge globally. And there are in fact quite a few independent but parallel efforts converging on the 'dumbification' of phones at the moment: from the proliferation of new but old-school-style flip phones to models that only include the basics — i.e. voice calls and text, and not much more. There are also lots of ways of temporarily dumbifying your phone to make it more difficult to use or less distracting or less eye-catching (e.g. switching to B&W, turning off notifications, apps that lock it after set times, etc. All of which are creative responses by both the marketplace and ordinary users to the problems we're encountering.