As the song originally gave us about flowers\u2014where have all the people gone?<\/p>\n
I used to enjoy chatting with Chris\u2014the guy at the local bank\u2014whenever I wandered in to cash a cheque. However, now he\u2019s gone and been replaced by a squat grey machine with a screen that apparently does the same job. It may read a cheque (not very well) but the machine has absolutely no sense of humour and doesn\u2019t respond whenever I tease it about Chelsea FC losing again. Chris also used to dispense so-called racing tips to me, so I suppose I\u2019ve saved myself some cash because his tips invariably lost. I gather that not only Chris but now the whole branch of the bank will be moving in a few months as part of a \u2018central cost-saving exercise\u2019. This means that in future I will have to drive an extra 25 miles whenever I want to cash my measly little cheque for five quid\u2014money that will be lost in my extra mileage and fuel costs.<\/p>\n
And what about the \u2018staff savings and job cuts\u2019 at the supermarket when I am confronted by a self-checkout machine?\u00a0 Obviously, it means less people are employed because the machines are doing their jobs, but I miss not being able to have a real human being to talk to. I like the little friendly questions and answers at the check-out such as \u201c\u2026it\u2019s raining\u2014it looks like a busy day for you\u201d or \u201c\u2026only just clocked on\u201d. Yes, I know these are meaningless little snippets of polite conversation, but at least I know I am dealing with real people. If you tried to converse like that with a machine, all you\u2019d get would be \u201cPlease place your items on the weighing scale\u201d which doesn\u2019t do much to encourage social banter. Yes, I know I could go through a manned service point and put all my stuff on the moving belt, but have you seen the queues? The reason there are less customers in the self-checkout stations is that we don\u2019t like using them and we\u2019d prefer dealing with a real person. Machines are OK for a few small items\u2014toothpaste, milk, newspaper etc\u2014but have you seriously tried to do a major week\u2019s shop with loads of bottles and washing up liquid and bread and fruit and stuff? Unless it\u2019s just me and I\u2019m being cack-handed, my machine can\u2019t read the bar code or it\u2019s wrongly read the same item twice (so annoying) and the entry needs to be cancelled. You then have to wait for a human assistant which rather defeats the whole aim of staff saving. And then\u2014worst of all\u2014comes the all too loud \u201cUnexpected item in the bagging area\u201d. I try to hide. I feel I\u2019m a criminal and need to be arrested! It\u2019s so embarrassing and it\u2019s totally the machine\u2019s fault. I often swear at it in return but the resulting conversation is entirely one-sided. And which bit is the bagging area anyway? And why is my bag of leeks so unexpected?<\/p>\n
Another thing about the voice on self-service machines\u2026 she sounds exactly like my dentist, so for me, it\u2019s quite unnerving. Perhaps she really is my dentist. It\u2019s neutral but there\u2019s a hint of steel about it, as in \u201c\u2026now this won\u2019t take long, but I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s going to hurt a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why can\u2019t she be more human, more individual and less \u201csupersmarm\u201d? Personally, I\u2019d prefer comments like \u201cPlease insert your store card\u201d to sound deep and romantic like a sort of sexy Fenella Fielding. You should be able to choose your type of voice before you start. Customers could select from James Mason, Sharon Stone or Morgan Freeman to offer advice on the bagging area situation.<\/p>\n
This is all a part of an ever-increasing trend: to save money by cutting out people and replacing them with machines. By far the most worrying example of this trend is driverless cars. According to the Government, self-driving cars will be on our roads by 2021. But why? Nobody asked me. And nobody\u2019s asked you or anyone else either. It\u2019s apparently just going to happen. The Government says: \u2018We\u2019ve already got driverless vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers, so why not cars?\u2019 But they\u2019re missing the point. Unlike hoovering the sitting room or mowing the lawn which are considered chores, I actually enjoy driving. And so do millions of other people. In the USA they\u2019ve tried it out and they\u2019ve discovered that while machines are predictable, humans are unpredictable and behave illogically. No machine will be able to anticipate that the silly driver in front is going to suddenly pull out and turn right without rhyme or reason. It takes another human being driver to always prepare for the unexpected and take avoiding action. 73% of Americans in a recent survey said they would be too fearful to ride in a fully automated vehicle. They\u2019re right to be scared\u2026<\/p>\n
Welcome to \u2018Humphrey\u2019s Law of Forward Invention\u2019 which states that technology will always advance at its own reckless pace unless stopped by human beings. The reason that we\u2019re going to have driverless cars is because technology says it\u2019s possible\u2014not because we want it or even need it. After driverless cars, what next? I\u2019ll tell you. It\u2019ll be driverless airplanes. Oh, really? Apparently, that\u2019s already happening\u2026<\/p>\n
Perhaps we\u2019ll be able to remove the driverless plane crash from the airport bagging area before it\u2019s too late, but I rather doubt it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the song originally gave us about flowers\u2014where have all the people gone? I used to enjoy chatting with Chris\u2014the guy at the local bank\u2014whenever I wandered in to cash a cheque. However, now he\u2019s gone and been replaced by a squat grey machine with a screen that apparently does the same job. It may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-laterally-speaking","tag-humphrey-walwyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}