Pay attention – this is your chatbot speaking

New technology is always right - it’s the suckers using it who are in the wrong

For the avoidance of doubt - this gent is not me

I am reliably informed that my life has been enhanced by the ease of communicating with big organisations through chatbots, not to mention the sheer joy of pressing numerous digits on the mobile phone to replace something called speech, or as us boomers call it, speaking.

There is no end to the inconveniences that abound these days. You no longer need to be bothered by membership or ‘loyalty’ cards in physical form as the phone can capture all this information and spew it out on a computerised reader, I have even seen people use their watches for this very purpose.

Then there’s this whole business of having to download an app for even the most simple of things, such as parking (generally a PhD in parkingology is required for this), in other words what was once simple is now mightily complicated.

Moreover most of these wonderful systems are prone to malfunction and even when they work they tend to be much slower than the old ways of communicating. More alarmingly electronic means of communication are breading grounds for all manner of abuse by very bad people who can hijack the information you have been forced to place online and hold you to ransom or, and this is common among authoritarian regimes, steal and manipulate personal data for political ends.

Assuming you have been tolerant enough to reach this fourth paragraph it is possible that your inner boomer alert has started flashing. You may well conclude these reflections can be ignored as they emanate from an old geezer who simply can’t cope with the evolution of technology.

There may be something in this but because most of my working life has been taken up with journalism I am not a reflex Luddite, on the contrary I have been an early adopter of new communication technologies.

I even had a mobile phone in the days when they were ludicrously expensive, weighed a ton and could multi-function as a handy assault weapon. I also moved, albeit reluctantly, from my trusty typewriter ( younger readers can find reference to these devices in something called books) to a mobile computer, as I recall it, with a screen that allowed a maximum five lines of type. Then there was the whole business of communication when travelling which involved dismantling phone connection points in hotel rooms to allow your computer to speak to other friendly computers via the miracle of the telephone.

So, having survived the pioneering days of mobile communication, I am a bit miffed at the idea that my reservations over this plethora of new technology can simply be attributed to the old git syndrome, even though this cannot entirely be discounted.

A bigger reason for my discontent is that the evolution of technology has consistently failed to achieve greater convenience.

The chatbot that cannot recognise a simple request but spews out meaningless default responses is no help at all. The constant need to scan all manner of things on scanners that are barely fit for purpose is bloody annoying and often leads to waiting in long lines for the simple task of, say, verifying a theatre ticket when an actual physical ticket could do the job in nano seconds.

Yet blame for technological inadequacy is routinely attributed to users as opposed to the failures of the technology itself.

Like many people I am pragmatic which is why in  the early days of laptop computers I made it my business to learn how to use them to send stories from distant places to newspapers back home. We had previously phoned in copy to copytakers, highly efficient dictation speed typists, often with a wry sense of humour but it was a cumbersome process, as was sending telexes. I hasten to add that even I am not old enough to have been communicating by telegram.

Therefore even lugging cumbersome laptops often became a key part of my minimal fitness regime but it was an improvement on the old ways of doing things and so I learned how to use them.

In other words I have no objection to new technology that works but get hot and bothered by complex innovations which slow things down, replacing simplicity with needless complexity.

This does not exclusively apply to communications technology, it also applies, for example, to the development of electric vehicles. Were they cheaper, in possession of longer battery life and more convenient to charge, people would not hesitate to seek alternatives to the internal combustion engine. However the realities of their inconvenience has led to a sharp decrease in sales

This trend will be rapidly reversed once the technology improves. I may even come to love chatbots when they start working and I might even embrace the wonderful world of scanning. In the meantime let’s have less criticism of technology’s users and more effort to make these new technologies work and be user friendly.