I get laughed at quite a lot – mainly by my closest relatives, but increasingly by the Bots – because I don’t like apps. I don’t want to live my life through the glare of a smart phone. I don’t want to have to refer to a little pocket-world every time I want to do something. If I owe you money is it OK for you to hang-on until I am at home and can log onto my computer? (I hope your house won’t be repossessed in the lengthy wait.) Is it OK to tap my real-life-plastic-Boots-loyalty card on the machine rather than go through pages of multicoloured apps on the phone?
My Boots/Nectar/Superdrug/M&S/Tesco loyalty cards are vintage items. Specimens from a pre-smart-phone-realm, and work perfectly well. Oh wait, it didn’t go through? Wait, my phone needs to see my face. Enter passcode. Hang on. Can you do it again? Sorry.
The Self-Serve-Till-Bot gets annoyed with me at the “do you have a loyalty card?” moment because It has to wait while I get out my wallet and shuffle through various cards and present It with a faded bar-code on a battered rectangle of plastic; I hear It tittering with the other Till-Bots as It watches me – 52-years of greying-wrinkled-drooping-imperfect-humanness – get my card out “Look!” It sneers to the other Till-Bots, “another one of those stupid humanoid App-Deniers! How quaint! How dinosaur! I’m going to mess with her head now and flash some error lights to add to her general confusion!”. The Bots crease over in silent Botty Hysteria. A human shop assistant helps me finalise the transaction with a pitying look. I refuse to feel shame. But also I obviously feel shame, scuttling out, clasping my retro loyalty card.
There’s part of me that wants to be modern and slick and really on-board with all the new-fangled tech of today. Life at my finger-tips. Efficiency and brilliance. A smooth-cruise. To have the answers. Yeah.
But there’s a bigger part of me that holds up both hands and wants to push back. Why the rush? Why does everything have to be in such a goddamned rush? What’s wrong with having £1.50 in your pocket, getting out of the car, going to the machine, cursing at how complicated it is, coming back to the car with a crumpled ticket and then going to the shops? (Small confession here, I do have Ringo. Proper life-safer.) Do I actually need every single local take-away-restaurants’- menu on tap? Do I need to have a global-sized-jumble-sale at my beck-and-call (Vinted)? Is buying clothes ever recommended to be done whilst sitting in the doctors waiting room? What about the joy and frustration of going to a shop (even a slightly smelly second-hand shop!) and rummaging through rails, touching the material, holding it up against yourself in front of the mirror? Trying on glamorous shoes that you know you absolutely don’t need as you never go to parties that warrant such a fabulous pair of high-heels, but you can’t try on glamorous shoes if they’re an image on an app.
Mind improving word games to stave off dementia?
Qualifying your body’s health via the daily data on your screen?
Am I tired? The app says my REM was below average last night. I must be tired.
Every newspaper ever published behind a little button revealing what grim event took place 2 minutes ago or what piece of shit ruling Trump has made. Is it vital to know minutes after these happenings? I don’t know if that is better for me. I don’t feel like I’m missing out if I discover something a few hours later…
Back in the golden days one might buy a printed paper from the local newsagents, along with a packet of Polos and a second-class stamp for the thankyou letter to Granny, come home, sit for 20-minutes, read the headlines from what happened the day before, contemplate the awfulness of politicians and criminals, put the paper away in the light-the-fire-pile, and then get on with the days necessary chores. (Visit the bank, deposit a cheque; go to the grocers for some vegetables, hit the butchers for some sausages, trot off to the independent book shop to find a new cook book…) It all took a bit longer. And in the process of doing those chores, it was likely that one might also bump into someone one knew – in the queue for sausages, or over the apples in the veg-shop. It was all quite slow and human.
I know my thinking is daft, illogical and probably describes an unnecessary paranoia about living in an age of technology, and I know that I am sounding exceedingly Boomer, but having been laughed at by a young relative recently for having WIND DOWN WINDOWS in our car, I have been mulling this over a lot. I like the circular motion of winding down my own car window. And you know what? I’m dreading when the time comes and a new car has to be bought because the fucker will be no doubt run by a fucking app from our phones. Speed up slow coach!
