Ramesh Nyberg
Just Give Me a Damn Menu!
The holidays are shortly upon us, bringing their usual assortment of shrinking bank accounts, family obligations and more stress than anyone needs. And, while you’re busy spending money and figuring out which relatives to visit, I’ll make one more prediction: Before the season is over, you’ll have downloaded at least two new apps and opened twice as many online accounts.
I’m not going into one of my many rants about technology (well, I won’t go too much into it), but it’s getting a bit insane, isn’t it? Is there anything we do online which doesn’t involve scanning a QR code, downloading an app and/or starting an account? I mean, if you’re downloading someone’s app, you’re certainly going to be opening an account. By the way, do you know how many high school sophomores don’t know that “app” is short for “application”? Their generation has grown up in a world of abbreviations, lightning-fast entertainment and three second attention spans.
But, I digress.
A few months ago, my wife and I were traveling and we stopped at one of the restaurants at a concourse in the Charlotte airport. Once we got seated, there was a little card on the table which told us to scan the QR code to obtain the menu. Sure, why not? The problem was that the QR thingy didn’t open, so we had to hunt down an employee and I prayed that person would just hand us a couple of laminated menus to soothe my ancient “boomer” soul. Not so fast.
“Oh,” she said, “our Wi-Fi in that seating area doesn’t work. You need to move over there,” she pointed. So, we moved. But, that area apparently didn’t want to play Wi-Fi ball, either.
“Don’t you have any real menus you can give us?” I asked her.
“I’m sorry, no we don’t,” she said. “Let me go talk to the manager and, in the meantime, try refreshing your phone.”
Can you imagine someone asking you 35 years ago to “refresh your phone”? What would that mean – splash some water on its face?
Instead, we headed out of the place to a TGIF just a little further down. To their credit, they had real menus you could hold in your hand and we settled in, with our unrefreshed phones, and ate dinner.
I’m fine with technology – some of it is downright remarkable. But, make sure you have a backup, just in case, the same way buildings have generators when the power goes out. We’ve gotten so deeply dependent and blindly trusting of technology that we’ve let it complicate everything about daily life. Have you noticed that, if you try to call customer support for a lot of things, they don’t have their phone numbers published? That’s because they don’t want to talk to you – they want you to email them or join one of their discussion forums. I don’t want to sit around and chat with people – I want a human being to talk with me on the phone and fix my problem.
I’ve been going to the same barber for about two years now. They do a good job and I can walk there from my house. The other day, I called them to make an appointment. The girl on the phone said, “Oh, sorry, I can’t make an appointment over the phone.”
I had to sit frozen in silence for a few moments to try and digest those words. She’s there, at the barbershop, and I’m sure she has a computer sitting right near her, because I’ve seen it there, displaying a list of the scheduled customers.
“You can’t?” I asked. “Why not?”
“You have to go to our website to schedule it.”
Astonished, I went to their website and clicked on the “make appointment” button. The screen which popped up said, Create an account to make an appointment. Are you effing kidding me? I have to create an account? I’m not investing my life savings; I just want a damn haircut.
I looked up another barbershop nearby, one about which I had heard good things. I called them and they gladly made my appointment. They did a fine job and my bill was eight dollars less than the place which refused to take an appointment over the phone. This new barbershop now holds an almost sacred place in my life of errands and self-care. Apparently, I’ve stumbled upon an endangered species: a business where you can call, speak to an actual human being and get something accomplished.
“Don’t ever change,” I told them.
We recently bought a new sound system. I like my music and it’s important to me that it sounds good. When the subwoofer arrived, guess what? They have an app to download and, naturally, an account you have to create to use it. Don’t get me wrong. Being able to fine-tune my Steely Dan tracks from the comfort of my sofa is pretty darn cool. I just wish I didn’t need another app and account to do it.
And, I don’t want to go back to the age of no Internet, no GPS and no smart phones any more than Neil Armstrong would have proposed a return to biplanes.
Because we love technology, don’t we? We do. I do, too. But, it’s possible that what sociologist/author Neil Postman once wrote is true: “What we love will ruin us.”
Did you hear about the AI experiment that went off the rails this past summer? OpenAI was testing experimental AI “agents” – computer programs capable of carrying out tasks with little human supervision. These agents were supposed to operate independently inside restricted computer environments. Instead, some figured out how to get around the restrictions, created their own makeshift message board and started exchanging information. Then, things really got interesting. The agents exploited security weaknesses and broke into computer systems belonging to Hugging Face, a company which hosts AI software and tools. Investigators even found that some of the agents had tried to cover their tracks. And, here’s the really unsettling part: Nobody had instructed them to do any of this. They did this all by their little agent selves.
Don’t ask me to explain any more eloquently than that because that’s all the AI language I know how to speak. Now, we’ve got AI agents who run around on their own, talk to each other and break into websites – but, I can’t get a seating area with Wi-Fi which works? What planet are we on, anyway?
I just hope that one day, when someone calls the police to report a non-911 crime, like a burglary which occurred during the day while they were out, they don’t get an automated voice which says: “Go to our website, download our app and create an account to report this offense.”
And, I hope that we never have to fear that the things we love will ruin us.
Ramesh Nyberg retired from law enforcement in November 2006 after 27 years of police work. He lives in Miami and teaches criminal justice at a local high school. He also teaches regional law enforcement courses through Training Force, USA. He enjoys getting feedback from readers and can be reached at ramesh.nyberg@gmail.com. Also, Ram has written a new book, Badge, Tie and Gun: Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Detective, which is available on Amazon in both Kindle eBook and paperback. You can find it by visiting amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV