Technology brings us closer to a world without people

Dave O'Connell

A Different View

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

We are moving inexorably closer to a world without human contact, where you can carry on most of your day-to-day business without ever laying eyes on another face.

It’s all down to the internet of course, the device that has turned our lives on their heads, the tool that has opened up frontiers that we could never have imagined.

But does that mean we have to shake off lifelong habits as though they were something unpleasant stuck to our shoes?

The banks want you to do your business online, and even if there’s still a bank open near enough to you to patronise, there will be ATMs and automatic lodgement facilities that will still deprive you of human contact even when you’re close enough to reach out and touch it.

The big grocery outlets and supermarkets are refurbishing their stores to increase the self-service tills at the expense of those manned by staff – that’s of course if you don’t do your shopping online in the first place.

We used to go to record shops to browse through the LP’s – now we buy albums that don’t actually exist, except as a download stored on a cloud and requiring nothing more than the physical presence of a computer.

One of life’s great joys is to wallow in the escapism of books piled high and wide in a bookstore – but now you can click on your Kindle and download a paperless version of a new novel without leaving your bed or couch.

You may have been prompted to purchase your online book because you’d just read a review of it…..on a digital version of your old newspaper, read on your iPad or Nexus.

And chances are, if you are invited to a wedding, the happy couple will have a present list on some top store’s website, where you go, click on something in your price range, and pay by credit card.

So you’ve bought a present you’ll never see with money you’ve never handled – and you’ve spoken to absolutely no one through the entire process.

All of this is wonderful in terms of the freedom it gives you to shop for the best price, to order something in the blink of an eye and to avoid parking charges – not to mention rain – to carry out transactions at the click of a mouse.

But is that the only measure?

It’s terrific to avoid the long queue out the door of the bank on a wet Friday evening, waiting behind someone who has ten transactions to make as you’re double parked on a street with its own traffic warden.

But when you got to the top of the queue and encountered the friendly face of your local bank – the teller, as opposed to the suits who bankrupted the country who never meet with the public outside of the golf club – then you enjoyed a bit of a chat as to where you were off to on your holidays and what was the best way to break down your foreign currency.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.