A jolt of modernity

by Richard Peters

Modernity has a habit of creeping up on us – and then giving us a sudden jolt.

 

Thanks! But, ouch?

It was a quiet evening after a long day. I was at home, relaxing with a cup of tea and some biscuits as I wound up some correspondence. It was nearly time to turn in. All I wanted to do was send someone an email with a pdf attachment. So I composed my email, hit send – and then Gmail intervened with a warning message: “It looks like you wanted to include an attachment (in your email you wrote “I attach”) but there is no attachment. Send anyway?”

A rush of emotions hit me simultaneously: the shock of the unexpected; rage at some faceless piece of software actually READING my email; delight at not having made a fool of myself by forgetting to attach the pdf; shame for needing help with something so trivial; anger at my carelessness; and disconcertment at being wrenched into the present day in this manner. This brush with the cutting edge of digital life left me drained and weak. I even had to put down my biscuit.

 

Older, not wiser

Perhaps it’s just me: I’m in my mid-forties now, so I might simply be in the process of becoming a grumpy old man. I like to think of myself as one of the earliest digital natives; after all, I was playing computer games on the Sinclair ZX80 while I was still at primary school! But the fact that I can remember dial-up modems and floppy disks when they first came out makes me more of a digital dinosaur in today’s always-on world of Snapchat, Minecraft and gaming championships.

People who know me will say that, although I can be a bit ditzy at times, I’m generally au fait with 21^st-century life. Or at least, I thought I was: I’m a keen car sharer (having now overcome my initial tendency to leave key possessions on the front passenger seat), I WhatsApp at teenage speeds with both thumbs, I know my 20-digit WiFi password off by heart. And I keep up to date with current affairs, so I’m aware of the rise of big data and its role in the uncanny ability of the likes of Amazon to predict my desires based on algorithms.

But on the evening in question, I just wasn’t prepared mentally for my very own email account to nudge me, nanny me, nettle me in this way. Like a lot of people here in Germany and throughout the world, I’m concerned about how internet corporations are gathering ever more data and packaging their insights as irresistible commercial offerings. It felt like a loss of personal sovereignty, a hopeless kind of subsumption into the Matrix, to have Gmail interpret my intentions and then intervene – however correct that interpretation was, and however grudgingly welcome the intervention.

 

Exhausted by data

In this day and age, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by information. With everything we ever do online being recorded somewhere, and our every move being tracked by our mobile phones, we’re only a small step from George Orwell’s dystopian vision of a surveillance state. I read just a few days ago, for instance, that police forces in the UK currently hold photographs of more than 20 million members of the general public – that’s one-third of the population – despite the British government having no biometrics strategy and no legal framework for this intrusive use of data.

Let’s not forget that the personal data we keep online is a constant target for hackers. One particularly egregious example that comes to mind is Yahoo’s admission – almost five years after the event – that all three billion of its customer accounts in existence in 2013 were hacked.

However, companies aren’t only victims in this story; they can also be the culprits. A couple of years ago I flew to Manchester and hired a car at the airport. As I was filling out the paperwork at the car hire desk, I was asked to sign the paperwork electronically (using a little pad and stylus that were hooked up to the salesperson’s computer). Out of curiosity, I asked what the hire company would do with my signature, to which the breezy reply was “Oh, after twelve months it’ll be archived.” Not deleted, archived. Why?

 

Data to the rescue

But while any misuse of data is execrable, we should remember that many conveniences of modern living put the same data to excellent use.

After all, where would we be without Google Maps to tell us how to reach our next appointment, and which trams and trains to catch? Can we really imagine queuing at the bank to manage payments, transfer money between accounts, or simply find out our bank balance? And how isolated would we feel in a world where emails, chats, and tweets couldn’t automatically find their way onto our smartphones?

There are major areas of modern life in which we stand to benefit from an increase in the collection and analysis of personal data. To name just three of many: mobility, where connected vehicles have the potential to save lives by analysing driver behaviour and intervening to prevent accidents; health care, where a more comprehensive use of data could both improve medical outcomes for individuals and identify trends for the population at large; and governance, where thorough sharing of data not only improves accountability but can also enable new solutions to existing problems, for instance in crime prevention.

From my work producing corporate communications for major international companies, I know that the world is becoming more and more connected – I expect it’s only a matter of time until I receive messages from my shoes telling me it’s time to shine them. Since the likelihood of finding myself in brand-new situations interacting with state-of-the-art technology is only going to increase, I guess I’ll just have to get used to the occasional jolt. As long as that doesn’t involve actual electricity, I should be fine.