I recently moved. My work gave me a new role and transferred me. Nothing has offered me a better perspective on how capitalism and Silicon Valley are trying to digitally enslave me than the process of moving. Product companies, retailers, and service providers are herding us into commercial pens in the cloud. Once we are all locked inside they are going to whip us and prod us to give up more and more of our money, information, and privacy.
Upon signing the lease for an apartment, the property management company suggested I download their app. Through this app, I could purchase renter’s insurance from an affiliated insurance company. I had already purchased a renter’s policy from another company. That company made using its app a mandatory feature of their policy. Progressive auto insurance also suggested I download their mobile application. Comcast had me download the My Xfinity app to manage my in-home internet service, and they want me to download an additional app for additional features (wi-fi hotspots, I think). Speaking of wi-fi, there’s another app to manage my Netgear router/modem.
In addition to the router/modem in the house, I installed a Nest thermostat. I like the customizability and learning features, but it requires an app apart from Google Home, which I already use with my Google Home Mini. This was disappointing. I thought that Nest could be fully harnessed from within Google Home.
I downloaded Task Rabbit and Dolly to help with tasks related to moving in. I haven’t used either of them yet, but I still may. The City of Chicago offers a 311 app for city services. The Postal Service has two apps, plus there is one for FedEx and one for UPS (all of which are important, so I do not miss deliveries of new items for my apartment, alongside Amazon’s app). I bought a new television, and instead of relying on a generic “smart” platform or something like Google Home or Chromecast, it is a Roku TV. The Roku app is mandatory for use. My Vizio soundbar does not play nice with Google Home either and has its own app instead.
Walgreens is next to my office and wants me to use their app. I already have CVS though (two apps – one for the store and one for my insurance pharmacy benefit management). If Amazon could point a gun at me to get me to use Alexa, it would. From eBay (which offers an app, of course), I purchased a second-hand Dyson space heater/cooler (the magical one without a fan). It too offered an app to control the apparatus via wi-fi. Unfortunately, the Dyson app does not “talk to” the Nest app or Google Home, leaving optimal home climactic conditions so close, yet so far from my grasp.
I would probably ditch TripIt, since it does not do much for me, but I demur because it syncs with the expense management program of the company I work for. That system is called Concur. It has its own app that takes up 67.3 MB on my phone, but it’s just a glorified camera to capture $11.15 lunch receipts from Panera while I am traveling. I assume Panera has an app. Every time a flight I am booked on starts boarding, I get a notification from TripIt, a notification from the airline’s app, and a text from the airline. Those are on top of e-mails from TripIt and possibly from the airline. The Googleplex is not very happy that so many other platforms know the most intimate details of my itinerary, and it tries to butt in with notifications, e-mails or calendar alerts. If I change my plans and cancel or modify a reservation, forget about it. Google and TripIt will register the new plans but fail to cancel the old ones, leading to conflicting itineraries.
In my new apartment, four windows need curtains. I ordered curtain rods from Overstock.com. Two arrived with no problem. Another two arrived damaged. I asked Overstock for replacements. They said that one of the rods I had originally ordered is out of stock, so they can only offer a refund. For the other, they processed a replacement. However, I was going to be out of town, so I asked them not to process it until I was going to be back. They processed it anyway, so I had to ask UPS to hold the delivery. UPS did this, but then they lost the package. I had to then process another return-replacement with Overstock. When the package finally came, I got my toolbox and drill out of the closet, opened the cardboard package, and the third replacement was also damaged! I now have to package up yet another Overstock curtain rod, print a return label, and drive to a UPS Store (likely the one 10-15 minutes from my office) just to fix their problem. They will then inevitably try to give me a store credit, and I’ll have to contact customer service to beg them to actually just give me my money back. As for my curtains, I will probably go to Home Depot (close to the aforementioned UPS Store) and just buy them. They will not match the curtains that are already up, but it’s better than this neverending e-commerce hell.
What do you think the chances are that I can avoid having to download an app if I join a new gym?
The company I work for just migrated our intranet and internal communications to Workplace by Facebook. It’s like Facebook, but only for my 70,000 closest co-workers. I’ve spent more than 10 years optimizing my personal Facebook. I guess I now have to do that again on Workplace. The company wants me to download the Workplace app to my phone. The last time I downloaded one of my company’s communication apps about a year ago there were about two total messages and then I never heard from it again. Consider me skeptical about this new one.
At this point, my cell phone is begging me to disgorge. It is out of storage space. It is running pitifully slow, which only makes relying on apps for every aspect of life even worse. I’m in a Kafkian cycle of password resets and entering my credit card information. Apps were supposed to make life easier, but they seem to have done everything but. I’ve reached this point of indignation, and I have not even had Facebook or work email on my phone for years. I’m even diligent at turning off all but the most urgent notifications.
I have resisted the anti-Big Tech bandwagon over the past few years. I believe that digital technology can truly add value to our lives, and I am even willing to grant tech companies access to certain details of my life (particularly, some commercial information) in exchange for their services. There is such a proliferation of companies extending platforms that very few platforms have been able to develop dominant network effects. Microsoft came close in the ’90s but got burned by anti-trust. Google seems to be feeling the same heat today. Facebook had a good run for its money, but then it got overrun by stupid videos from your mom’s friends and Russian trolling.
The underlying architecture of the internet – the www; the HTTP; the HTML – the guts of the internet, is open source. No one owns the internet. It is the ultimate international platform of coordination, communication, collaboration, and interoperability. Anyone can build on top of it for free. It’s a shame that the next layer, the platforms that facilitate our commerce and communication, is not open source. Imagine if all car ride providers collectively owned Uber. They would retain all of their earnings, minus the cost of servicing the platform. Plus, drivers and riders would not have to toggle between multiple services. If there were only one smart home platform that any hardware could access free of charge, all of our devices could “talk” to one another. No need for different platforms for different company-families.
Estonia is well regarded as a leader in civic digitalization, and I believe the reputation is well deserved. They’ve effectively digitized identity, and it really helps speed up civil services. If I want to get a parking permit for Chicago streets I first need to apply for an Illinois license and then for the parking permit. Both of these steps would probably be in person, and I would have to bring various proofs of residency and motor vehicle ownership. Estonia’s digital identities render these steps obsolete. If Chicago were a city in Estonia I could apply online and get a result in minutes. Imagine if commercial services could tie into this digital portfolio. Linking up bank and brokerage accounts would take minutes, not days. Money could transfer instantly. Services could stop sending me constant messages to verify my e-mail address. I would not have to enter my address for deliveries. Companies would automatically know when I moved and update my profiles instantly. I would not have to sign in to each and every one of them and manually update my address (shipping and billing).
Many people are familiar with the difference between organ donation in the US and Europe. The US has an opt-in system, and lots of people do not opt-in. Europe has an opt-out system, so they have a lot more organ donors. Technology has fallen into the opt-in trap for safety and security. With every new piece of hardware, service, or app, I have to find the settings and disable volleys of notifications, scour the internet for optimal security settings, and spend lots of time setting it all up. Sometimes I can’t figure it out and I give up. Changing the default from opt-in to opt-out would be easy. The tech companies would just have to configure it that way. They don’t, because opt-out is more conducive to their machinations. Their notifications, e-mails, and texts keep us entwined in their systems. Their ability to collect data from our phones and by tracking us on our computer permits them to better profile us and fence us into their ever-expanding commercial pens. In addition to getting penned-in, every new device, app, website, or service increases our risk of hacking and identity theft.
Another pain in my digital rump has been document storage. If you still store everything in My Documents, you’re a chump. You’re liable to lose everything. Google Drive and Dropbox are both viable alternatives. Microsoft’s native competitor is OneDrive. By nature of having a Gmail account, I have Drive. I also have Dropbox, and through work I have OneDrive. I haven’t been an Apple dilettante since 2011, so I don’t have any Airhead services to deal with. I hate it when I have a document, such as a receipt, in a personal account, and I need to get it to a work account, or visa versa. Add on top of these problems that Adobe is now offering a cloud storage feature and it is competing with DocuSign for legal documents, and cloud storage has quickly developed into a Cat 5 hurricane disaster.
Perhaps the term “cloud” storage has made us all a bit naive. Cloud just means the files are not stored on our local hard drive, so they are available through any device. However, they still have to be stored on a hard drive somewhere. That somewhere is probably the data center of the Big Tech company, and data centers are expensive to operate. Tech companies need to cover their costs, so there’s nothing wrong with them trying to earn money from the service or through a related scheme. It’s even expected. However, society would benefit if there was better coordination between these services. It is nearing the point where they are a public service, like essential home utilities.
Tech companies have converged on our smartphones as the key to our shackles. They became ubiquitous 10-15 years ago, and after that apps became a convenient way to engage consumers and exchange information. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As we rely on phones and apps more and more, it becomes natural to offer services over them more and more, only reinforcing the reliance. I wish that Silicon Valley would at least make our prisons comfortable. My television is controlled by the Roku app on my phone, but that has disengaged since I got a new phone, so I have to go through the process of signing back in and repairing the television with the device. If there was a universal platform for the software-hardware(-wetware) interface, then reconnecting all of my services and devices would not be so painful. It could be as easy as scanning a QR code on the back of the TV and then another one on the back of the router, but that’s not the case. It requires multiple logins, passwords, and pairing PIN codes, and it will probably inexplicably unpair in three to six months, right when I need to use it most, causing me much consternation.
For some companies, the hardware is a gateway to their services. Google and Amazon come to mind first, with Google Home and Alexa. They are offering cheap or free hardware in the hopes of corraling consumers into their ecosystems. Google Home Minis and Echo Dots are the gateway drugs of digital addiction. For other companies, the hardware is the breadwinner. iPhone is the cash cow for Apple. If apps become more sophisticated and require more computational power, services companies may start giving away smartphones to consumers in the hopes of getting them hooked on the services. I wouldn’t be surprised if consumers in developing nations begin to get free or subsidized smartphones, Chromebooks, and internet access. These people are not sheep for their digital pastors yet, and the Big Tech companies are salivating to brand their herd and begin reaping the rewards.
Update: I got a new phone. Android, in all its wisdom, transferred my apps. However, it did not transfer my logins and passwords or my preferences. It is a multi-day marathon to get everything properly configured. I’ve also set up a lot of multi-factor authentications, but my primary second step was an authentication app on my phone. The setup of the authentication app did not transfer over, so I have to go to the websites of all of the sites and set up an alternative form of verification and then set it up on my phone. Technology. Making our lives better since March 10, 2000.