My wife and I recently drove to Davis to attend a concert at UC Davis Mondavi Center. The next morning, we decided to walk around the campus to enjoy the grounds, grab a cup of coffee and perhaps visiting one of the museums. I pulled into a parking spot where there was a sign instructing us to “pay by app.” There’s nothing unusual about parking apps, and they can be an enormous convenience, especially for frequent parkers. But there were no other payment options such as a meter or an attendant.
What would you do if you didn’t have a smartphone or its battery was dead or you couldn’t get a signal? I have a working phone, so I downloaded the app, but I couldn’t get it to work. After numerous attempts, I called the university parking office. The person tried to help, but I still couldn’t get the app to work, and there were no other ways to pay. The sign warned that I could be “cited and/or towed.” As much as we wanted to walk around campus, it wasn’t worth the risk. So, the museums and coffee shops didn’t get the money we would have spent.
I recently had a guy come up to me in a parking lot to ask if he could get right behind my car to sneak through the toll gate. He wasn’t trying to cheat, but there was a problem with his ticket, and there were no attendants to take his money and let him out.
As someone who considers himself a tech enthusiast, I am all for the use of apps, smart devices and other technologies that often make our lives easier and better, but I also worry about when these technologies replace rather than enhance or supplement existing ways of doing things.
Ride-hailing apps and cellular outages
One example is ride-hailing apps. I love Uber and Lyft and use them frequently, but I wish there were alternative ways to hail and pay for them other than an app. Not everyone has a working phone or is tech-savvy enough to use their app.
I was reminded of this last year when there was a massive AT&T cellular outage while my wife and I were visiting New York. Not only could I not get an Uber, but I also couldn’t get walking directions from my Google Map, nor could I pay for anything using my phone. Fortunately, I also have physical credit cards, I don’t mind walking, and New York’s grid system makes it easy to find addresses in mid-Manhattan. But my wife was trying to get from Greenwich Village to the lower east side where navigation is much more complicated. Fortunately, she ran into a local who walked with her to her destination. But, on another trip, a colleague of mine had a much worse situation. She landed at JFK during a cellular outage. When she couldn’t get a Lyft or Uber, she took a cab. But because of the outage, the driver’s credit card reader didn’t work, and she didn’t have enough cash to pay the fare. She was able to borrow cash to pay the driver, but I wonder if that cabbie wound up calling it a day knowing that he might get inadvertently stiffed from other cashless customers.
Of course, there was a time when there were no Ubers or Lyfts or even credit cards to pay for cab rides. I even remember when there were no ATMs, and you had to carry cash or traveler’s checks. There wasn’t even interstate banking, so I had bank accounts in L.A., Chicago and New York in case I was stuck and needed cash on a business trip. But we knew what we were up against, and savvy travelers were prepared for the world we lived in. These days, many of us travel with little or no cash. I spent 10 days in the UK and Germany recently without a pound or euro in my wallet, and it worked out fine because I could pay for everything with my phone or credit cards. Fortunately, there were no phone or power outages during my trip, but I was so nervous about my battery dying on some days that I minimized my phone to keep it running.
Most airlines these days don’t take cash for food aboard the flight. But United doesn’t even take credit cards. You have to use their app, and you can’t download it once airborne. You have to set up your app and enter a form of payment before takeoff.
Other examples include restaurants that require you to use an app or website to make a reservation or the many businesses that never answer their phone, assuming they even publish their phone numbers. And don’t get me started on voice recognition systems that don’t understand what you’re saying or aren’t programmed to help you with whatever your issue is. There have been many times when I’ve pushed 0 or shouted “agent” or “representative” into the phone, which sometimes works but often still doesn’t get you to a human.
Need more examples? How about self-checkouts that might get you out of the store sooner or might frustrate you to no end. I worry that they could completely replace humans. Another is “smart” devices that require you to use voice commands. Again, a convenience when they work but not when they don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Have you returned anything bought from Amazon to a Whole Foods store? It’s great, until you can’t find the QR code on your phone or your phone doesn’t work at the store. The same with paperless concert or movie tickets, which are great, assuming you can find and display the required QR code.
I love that most of my healthcare providers have portals that let me make appointments and see my test results. But sometimes I get the test results before I speak with my doctor, and any abnormalities can be emotionally triggering if I don’t know what they mean.
I appreciate the motivation behind Europe’s data privacy laws that require websites to give you choices about what cookies they store. But sometimes the choices are complicated and time consuming, so it’s faster to just check “accept all,” which defeats the purpose of a privacy law.
And, finally, there is the memory of the time, several years ago, when I was reviewing TVs and set-top boxes in my family’s living room. What was once an easy-to-use home entertainment system became an advanced engineering project, prompting my then teenage daughter to say “Daddy, I just want to watch TV.”
Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at larry@larrymagid.com.