Anti Tech

We did have a "cashless society" thread recently which covered much of this ground

I'm a professional colouring-in/print person.

I miss my time in the dark-room, using the camera and planning up film at the light table. Rotring pens and hand drawing forms.

Jobs took time, you had time to think about them, you'd not even look at something for weeks before you made a start. Even marking up artwork overlays correctly was an art.

Now you get some knobber who think you are being awkward because you won't print a load of business cards while they wait! 🙂

So I am absolutely not anti tech - I work for a software engineering company - but I think there is a point where tech and privacy need to be considered.

As it stands, people who don't know much about tech (or indeed ones who do and don't care) are the ones who are having everything about their life tracked and catalogued by a number of corporate giants. Despite being all over tech and data, I am not comfortable with just how easy and legal that has become.

What @seriousrikk says. Also, data is the new oil and you're the well. Companies are making BILLIONS from you and your online presence and you don't see a penny for it.

Personally, i'm sick of 'tech' (i do have an electric car and a Powerwall though!) and have actively moved away from it. Everything has to be app driven now. I have a smart phone for my business, but when outside of work i have returned to the dumb phone which is great! No targeted marketing and little to no tracking. I have moved house into real rural Surrey, i'm practically off grid with no smart meter that continually gets my bills wrong.

Someone was on here saying that his light bulbs were sat on his local network?? I mean, really, why?? I had to buy a fridge / freezer the other month and the guy in the shop was giving it larry large that i can connect to my fridge via an app so when i'm shopping i can have a look in my fridge to see what i need! I'm 44 years of age and have never struggled with shopping in my life! Talk about over engineering or fixing a problem that doesn't exist!!

I don't have Sky or live TV so not constantly being sold to....it's actually cleansing to go back in time! I get great pleasure from chopping firewood and having a brew in the garden even when it's cold. I read a lot more and appreciate things like birdsong a lot more. I watch old films and comedies...i revisited Red Dwarf this week, it's brilliant! Britbox and Gaia are my only subscriptions facilitated by Apple TV (i'm a bit of a contradiction i know!)

When i go back into civilisation it really saddens me to see everyone just welded to their mobiles. I hate seeing it. It's almost as if real life isn't worth looking up for!!! 😀

Gigs are another thing, little to no atmosphere as everyone just stands filming the band rather than enjoying being there and being in the moment! Couples on a date - both just staring at their phones when the bloke should be focussing on the task in hand! 😉

I went back home to Manchester a couple of week ago and went into a bar where you had to download the menu via a QR code and you could pay the bill via it too. When i asked the guy 'what do they need you for then?', he said 'i've never thought of it like that'...maybe people should start thinking like that a bit more?

'Tech' is far too vague of a term. Saying you're anti-tech because you don't like social media is like blaming Johannes Gutenberg for Ayn Rand.

i’m practically off grid with no smart meter that continually gets my bills wrong.

You're having a laugh, surely? You'd prefer to have estimated inaccurate bills and twice a year someone comes around and breaks the door on your electricity meter and they still get your bill wrong anyway? Not me, my smart meter is great. You want to have to put a cheque in the post every month for your bills and have it come out of your account 10 days later assuming it made it? You want to have to go to the post office and get cash out to pay for a bit of paper to stick in your car's window every year? I could go on but the list is flippin endless.

People whinge at tech when it goes wrong or they don't like it, and they also whinge at humans when humans get stuff wrong (which happens all the time too). So people basically just whinge. They are anti-tech when it suits them and makes them feel better, but things really weren't better in the old days.

I went back home to Manchester a couple of week ago and went into a bar where you had to download the menu via a QR code and you could pay the bill via it too.

Probably allowed them to continue operating during COVID and saved a few lives. I'm guessing they kept it because it allow them to continue operating with fewer staff due to staff shortages.

I think there's three types.

1) People like my mum. Relatively savvy but too long in the tooth to be going down this road at her time of life. Quite happy doing what she's always done and frankly, visiting the bank gives her a day out.

2) People who are - understandably and possibly quite rightly - nervous about tech creep. I expect a lot of people fall into this camp including our offline banker. Not necessarily a bad thing. It's a brave new world and it's scary, I get that.

3) People who wear it as a badge of honour. The ones who leap into a thread asking about a Facebook issue to boast about how they deleted their account ages ago, about how Twitter is toxic (hah how prescient!) and how they only communicate with their family via the medium of interpretive dance once they've got home from smashing up looms. The living embodiment of the "how do you know when someone is a vegan?" cliché.

Its the people who clearly have the ability and means to use it who refuse to use it. I respect their right to make a choice but why? Strikes me as bloody mindedness.

Call me bloody minded if you want, but I refuse to use self-service checkouts if I can possibly avoid it.

I've been working all day, I don't want to go and relive my youth as a checkout operator in the evening.

My local Asda doesn't have any normal tills open after about 7pm, saw an older lady with a big trolley stacked full of shopping the other night and the staff were just standing round shrugging their shoulders. Makes my blood boil, so it does.

I'm OK with tech, much of it makes my life easier, or pleasanter though some is undoubtedly gratuitous tech for techs sake (internet fridge example above).  The thing is, it changes so quickly which becomes a challenge to adapt to as you get older. At 58 I'm holding my own, but I have to work at keeping in touch with stuff I'm not always that interested in, just so I don't get left behind.  I see my dad who was a lifelong tech enthusiast and early adopter, programing on his ZX Spectrum when I was a nipper, now struggling to operate his smart phone and internet banking.  He's 88, still has all his marbles it's just that the pace of change has overtaken his ability or inclination to adapt.  It does leave people behind and isolated if they don't have anyone to help with it.

So I am absolutely not anti tech – I work for a software engineering company – but I think there is a point where tech and privacy need to be considered.

This.

When you get asked by your local surgery to download yet another app just to be able to book your flu jab, nah I'll book it through boots instead thanks. The gradual creep to make everything online or app driven is getting ridiculous and as for websites that don't let you purchase as a guest... but then I guess they're just examples of bad tech application...

Edit- thing is tech is great until it isn't, good analogue is great & usually far easier to fix when it goes wrong.

I'm pro tech, but I absolutely believe that like everything else social media needs regulation. In the same way that I quite like cars but I don't like congestion or car-dependency.

is like blaming Johannes Gutenberg for Ayn Rand.

I try to blame him but he's blocked me on Mastadon.

It does leave people behind and isolated if they don’t have anyone to help with it.

Just been through the update of my wife's one day a week with the in-laws, trying to buy stuff on line for them but they don't have internet banking (which is a good thing) so they couldn't do 2 factor authorisation so couldn't buy online 🤔 excluding people is not the word & this is an elderly couple (one with dementia) who have tech savvy children nearby who can help them out.

I used to like tech and the ideas of tech. I went through a process of being fully involved in social media and looking for every tech option I could.

I got tired, and now I really value the fact I can sit at home and watch a non smart tv with Tea/nice glass of spirits with bugger all else going on around me and have no issue pressing a light switch.

I just got old I guess :-/

There's tech and there's tech.

proud technophobe here.
i can order stuff online. i try not to.
only app i have is strava. if i could find a reliable mileometer for my bike i would ditch strava.
i had a conversation with the receptionist at my doctors yesterday. she told me i could do everything online. i told her she would be out of work in no time if everyone took her advice.

It has its place and some of it is great. Other stuff not so much. Voice control for everything is crap as is facial recognition on phones. Both are massively hit and miss for me and not much quicker than other methods.

I used to be interested in new gadgets but can’t be arsed now. Nothing more irritating than setting up a phone, laptop etc. I think Tech will play a huge role in reducing worldwide GHG emissions and that’s a great thing.

i told her she would be out of work in no time if everyone took her advice.

It doesn't work like that. If simple stuff gets automated then people aren't out of work, they just do other things.

Voice control for everything is crap

I used to think that, but it has its benefits. I can just walk out of the room and say 'Alexa, lights' and two standing lamps, the TV lights and one ceiling light get turned off. Or I can just say 'goodnight' and it turns off all the lights except the upstairs hallway, and the TV. No hunting for remotes. The TV interface is pretty tricky to navigate with voice though, at times.

It doesn’t work like that. If simple stuff gets automated then people aren’t out of work, they just do other things.

actually it does work like that.
mother in law worked at a little tesco store in leeds. it had 4 tills. with 4 people on them.
it now has 4 self checkout things and 1 person stood watching the tills.

it now has 4 self checkout things and 1 person stood watching the tills.

Are those other people on the dole now?

Are they queueing up with thousands of weavers and spinners?

Doesn't make much sense to me to pay people to do something that could be done by a simple machine. I'd rather pay them to do something more interesting that cannot be done by a machine.

Im like Ton.

I can just walk out of the room and say ‘Alexa, lights’ and two standing lamps, the TV lights and one ceiling light get turned off. Or I can just say ‘goodnight’ and it turns off all the lights except the upstairs hallway, and the TV. No hunting for remotes. The TV interface is pretty tricky to navigate with voice though, at times.

I can just imagine what the worlds going to be like in 20 years time then. What’s wrong with just switching lights off? Does it use too much energy or is it laziness.
I suppose it’s fashionable though.

I’d rather pay them to do something more interesting that cannot be done by a machine.

Like what? The way things are going, I really can’t see an end to it. Sure, some thing can’t be automated……yet, but things are changing & the way it’s going (& have been for years) there’ll be few jobs that are solely humanly necessary.
I may not be ‘tech’ or have the ‘mental capacity’ (cheeky ****) but I reckon I’m wise enough, just like Ton, to see it all coming.

What do you mean like what? Pretty much anything else - that's a long old list.

You are aware that we've been automating jobs for 200 years and people have been saying that 'it' is coming for 200 years and 'it' doesn't seem to have come.

Put it another way - during the current cost of living crisis, do you want to pay extra to employ someone to operate a machine that you can operate yourself, when that person could be employed doing something else that you can't do yourself?

Automation may drive down wages, if it took off massively, but that's what governments need to address. I know I absolutely would hate to do a job knowing full well a machine could do it just as well and cheaper.

Huge amounts of your life behind the scenes has already been automated. When you pay for something, a piece of paper doesn't pass through a dozen pairs of hands over a week or so in order to reconcile the transaction. Do you think it should? If you sell a car do you want to take thousands in cash to a bank and queue up to pay it in? Do you want to write and post a letter to your bank to change your address? Do you want to write and post a dozen cheques every month for your bills? etc etc etc. I sure as hell don't.

mother in law and another lady left for other jobs. other 2 were move to another store.

as for all the stuff you post above, my answer is yes to most of it.
i like social interaction.
i like shops, banks, doctors waiting rooms, pubs, cafe's, trains, buses, talking to people on park benches, talking to blokes having a piss in a pub bog when i am too, roadies when out on my mtb, walkers when out on my mtb.

i like social interaction, i dont like automation doing everything for me, certainly not things i can do myself.

Automating some jobs means folk actually have MORE time for social interaction.

I would give you an inciteful and pithy answer as to why we should all be a bit more suspicious of 'Tech' and the wonders it promises, but I can't type a damn thing let alone post it on the interweb using this bloody typewriter!

Automating some jobs means folk actually have MORE time for social interaction.

Course it does...

What’s wrong with just switching lights off? Does it use too much energy or is it laziness.
I suppose it’s fashionable though.

You’ve not got them newfangled electric lights have you?
What’s wrong with extinguishing the fire and using a candle snuffer?

Self checkouts in supermarkets, especially large stores where most people are doing their big shop were a bit of a temporary middle ground I think, both in technology and public acceptance.
Self scan as you go round is awesome. No fiddling with the tills, no lifting everything onto the belt and then packing again. No standing in awkward silence in front of someone performing a fairly menial and simple task on your behalf once you have exhausted the conversation of “evening” “nasty weather out there” “what time are you on til”

I hope you're willing to pay all these people properly for doing jobs they can't do as well, or as cheaply as they are now, or is happy to pay a fat charge to keep bank branches open.

Person with electric car and powerwall claiming to be anti tech while posting on the internet 🙂 I have a smart meter, what I really like is that my car charges when electricity is cheapest.

I used to think that, but it has its benefits. I can just walk out of the room and say ‘Alexa, lights’ and two standing lamps, the TV lights and one ceiling light get turned off. Or I can just say ‘goodnight’ and it turns off all the lights except the upstairs hallway, and the TV.

doesn’t work when you have small kids who constantly play with light switches. The Hue Bridge gets confused and doesn’t work. Even when it does work the light switch is right there, next to you as you’re leaving the room. It’s just as quick to manually switch off. Alexa doesn’t always work first time either.

Automating some jobs means folk actually have MORE time for social interaction.

Mmmmmm, I’m more convinced by my mothers observation on the subject.

“The more labour saving devices that people get the less time they seem to have for each other”