Of all the vending machines I've ever used, the Metrocard machines in New York City were perhaps the easiest. They took cards and cash, dispensing and refilling Metrocard to every kind of person that rode the subway. Now, these trusty machines are being replaced by machines that are more streamlined and less intuitive. Here's a quote from an article lamenting the loss of the old machines:
The most important thing about the design, though, is how interaction is scripted in discrete steps. “There is one question per screen and nothing else you can do,” Udagawa explains. Refill an old card, or get a new card? Add more time or more value? Use cash or a credit card? One particular challenge in its adoption — remember, this was a decade before the launch of the iPhone — was just getting people to understand that you had to touch the screen to start. Ultimately, Moeslinger created an animated finger pointing to the “Start” button. “It made it so obvious,” she says. Another virtue: The type on the screen is huge — 54-point Helvetica Neue bold.
The modernization of New York vending machines is disappointing. The future it ushers in is contactless and cashless. Our lives are radically transparent to corporate and government interests already. Soon we'll have Smart Cities monitoring our every move.
There isn't a whole lot average people can do to resist this particular future. At this point, even those who carefully avoid phone and online activity have digital profiles in corporate databases. Refrigerators and watches are on the internet. Smart objects may be a train wreck in privacy and security, but they're wildly popular.
When I think of Smart Cities, I picture vast numbers of people controlled by vast networks of sleek-looking malfunctioning junk. Consider the prevalence of technical difficulties at present, then note how these difficulties might proliferate as complexity increases further. Through this lens, Smart Cities appear problematic. And then there's the question of who can afford to live in these Cities.
The answer is not everyone. Even now, there are hobo encampments in every major US city, and the economy isn't becoming more forgiving. It's becoming sharply less forgiving, and the people who are excluded from Smart Cities will have to go somewhere. My guess is that epic slums will emerge alongside the new Cities.
As someone who uses cash and doesn't carry a phone, I find it troubling that more and more companies are modernizing in a way that doesn't work for me. During the pandemic, many area restaurants stopped providing menus, forcing customers to use their phones to order. Some places stopped accepting cash entirely. I don't know if these measures were temporary or not, because I haven't returned to any such establishment.
It almost goes without saying that our adoption of Smart is being done without respect to the natural environment or human health. Local action may in some cases force companies and governments into developing more responsibly in a social and environmental sense. Here in Minneapolis, people have been trying to get the government to behave more responsibly for years, but the government is beholden to property developers and other special interests, so there's never any progress.
Will I have to carry a phone just to walk through some parts of my city in ten years? Maybe. Will some AI overlord know where I'm going before I do? Also maybe. I'm not afraid of this future. But I'm not thrilled about it either.
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