Hello Computer?

Modern technology/standard practice old man rant incoming, so prepare!

Most of you will have had similar experiences. This morning I devoted to administration. Paying monthly bills, catching up on bank statements, getting a refund from a replaced insurance policy. Boring adult business stuff.

The whole thing was nothing but frustration, and almost entirely due to technology. The technology that we think of as making our lives more convenient. The technology that “freed” us from hand-carrying paper checks to an office, or putting them in the mail.

You cannot transact electronic business any more without umpty-million complications. Almost every company is demanding that you:

a. Not only have a computer and a password, but also a separate computer (we call it a “phone”) on your person at the same time.

b. You cannot log in to your bank/credit card with your password. That’s not enough. You have to “check your phone and type number 23” while sitting in front of your non-phone computer.

c. Then, you can only pray that the “automatic” system will truly be automatic. Have you noticed they’ve taken away buttons like “return” and “enter” and “execute”? You don’t get to give commands anymore, and you don’t get confirmation. You can only hope automation carries it through.

d. When that fails, you can do nothing. If your browser window doesn’t refresh after you type in “your security code” that comes by text, you cannot force a refresh. You cannot say to it “this function did not execute. I require a different, non-phone-based method of verifying that I am who I am so that I may access my own account and my own money.” The companies don’t even build that possibility into their interface-have you noticed that?

e. If you can ever get through to a real human at any company, you have to go through a lengthy explanation: “I’ve already done all the things your system tells me I need to do. I followed the instructions. I do not need you to read them to me from a screen; the problem is not that I misunderstand. The problem is not that I’m ‘disobedient'. I already bowed and scraped and did all the orders your software system gave me. The problem is that, though I did what I was told, your system will not work for me. I need, please, a human to confirm that he understands that, and that he can lift me up out of this because I don’t have the power to make your system work.”

The chances of getting such a person on the phone are slim; the chances of them understanding my mother tongue and then also agreeing (or having the ability to override software) is even slimmer.

What this all looks like from a bird’s eye view: I am 50, and started on personal computing in the mid 80s. I learned to code in Basic on a Commodore 64 (cassette tape drive), and on IBM dummy terminals connected to a mainframe. I then learned everyday computing using DOS prompts. One had to have a working knowledge of the computer’s lexicon and command phrases just to get basic tasks done.

Then graphical interfaces came from Apple and then from Microsoft in the form of Windows. A few years later email became real, and this thing called the internet happened.

For years after, we were in a “sweet spot” with technology. Everyday software was standard, stable, and predictable. Computing really did save us time and aggravation by making tasks that used to require standing in line in the real world, or in a phone queue, easily done in seconds from your home desk.

All of this to say something simple that I really, really hope younger readers will grasp and accept: I know computing. I am not incompetent. I was around on earth watching as personal computing was invented. I am not “afraid of technology.” I was doing it literally before you were born.

Then it started to change. Smartphones took over. Things that didn’t used to need bespoke software started to need that. Operating systems—and their own bespoke, custom commands, symbols, and protocols—proliferated.

Along with new capabilities came as many, or more, security risks or the risk of the ever more complicated and contingent operating systems (they all have to talk to each other) simply failing.

At the same time, companies withdrew human customer service. Even the dreaded phone tree was better than what we have now.

So we have “all these capabilities,” but the systems that enable them are so precariously situated that one bad “bit” from another operating system causes the whole transaction to just shut down. And now there’s no one, no real human, to call.

I think we’ve gone backward in terms of human satisfaction and usability. I suspect also that we are no longer saving time in ordinary daily business because of this. It would be interesting to see an in-depth study.

What does it look like to you?