.jpg?20261110')
I have come to the conclusion that the world has gone completely app mad. There was a time when doing something relatively straightforward involved simply doing it. If you wanted to order a pizza, you picked up the telephone. If you wanted to park your car, you found a space, paid for it and went about your business. If you wanted to check your bank balance, you went to the bank or looked at your statement. Simple. Not anymore.
Apparently, nothing in modern life can be accomplished without first downloading an application. Want to pay for parking? Download our app. Want to order a coffee? Download our app. Want to book a restaurant, check into a hotel, turn on the air conditioning or find out when the next bus is coming? You’ve guessed it. There’s an app for that too.
Online delivery apps and remote working apps have removed the need to actually leave the house. Our younger generations are spending all their time at home or in their bedrooms and are not learning to interact with the outside world.
Older generations who grew up doing everything in person and who still think a phone is something you use to speak to people, are confused. Online banking systems are so complicated to use that they just cannot use them. I have an online banking app that makes me login with different user IDs to create, then approve and then release a payment at each stage. I have to open another app to generate an OTP number.
Then there are the passwords. Every app requires an account, and every account requires a password. Some insist on a capital letter, a number, a special character and the name of your first pet. Others send a verification code to your email, which you can only access by signing into another account. Before long, you have forgotten what you were originally trying to do.
And, to keep track of all these accounts and passwords, yep, there’s an app for that.
Of course, if you’re young enough, or at least not terrified of technology, then some of these apps are useful. Banking, navigation, communication and travel apps have made certain aspects of life considerably easier. I wouldn’t willingly give up Google Maps, for example. But there is a growing difference between technology that makes life easier and technology that simply inserts another unnecessary obstacle between us and what we want to achieve.
And what happens when your phone runs out of battery, your Internet connection disappears or the company decides to discontinue its app? Suddenly, you can’t pay, book, access or operate anything. We have managed to make ourselves entirely dependent on devices that are themselves dependent on electricity and a decent Wi-Fi signal.
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but I rather miss the days when a business provided a service and the customer simply used it. I don’t particularly want a relationship with every supermarket, restaurant, parking operator and household appliance manufacturer.
I just want to get things done.
Surely that’s what technology was supposed to be for?
Jackie@JBeedie.com