Posted on 14th January 2025
Let's talk more about how tech is failing us
I'm still stunned by the mental gymnastics required by Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen on the most recent 'Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg' show, claiming that now we "have AI" we "don't need coders and don't need to teach kids how to code".
There is a growing chasm in the understanding of technology in society. Yes there's the argument you don't need to understand it to use it, but all around all I see is people less able to use tech as it advances and it's not their fault. It's the awful stuff we keep building and promoting.
Over the last few weeks having spent a bit of time with people close to me, like my wife, in-laws and relatives, I'm left even more exasperated by how we in the tech industry are failing them.
On Mastodon I recently posted:
"Observing our parents generation use a smart phone really exposes how much we've failed in delivering inclusive tech...
If something as simple as a calendar with appointments can convince my father in law he's accidentally deleted an important appointment, when in fact he just has more appointments on one day than can be shown at once, the design is bad."
I also had a conversation with my own parents, frustrated by app re-designs. I dropped the apparent bombshell that, in the case of social media apps at least, often a redesign isn't intended to make the app more user friendly but instead to increase user engagement. Funnily enough when you tell people this they are pretty incensed - the penny seems to dropping about something they'd long suspected: That perhaps they are not to blame but someone somewhere in a big tech company is.
Only a week or so later another relative sent out the bat-signal for a bit of tech help. She is an intelligent middle aged woman who due to some bad experiences with tech is genuinely terrified when something, usually quite innocous, changes. In this case it was that came in the form of an update to her email app, which now includes advertising.
This update hadn't been explained to her by the app developer, it just updated one day and there it was. She thought perhaps her account had been hacked and worse still she thought she was to blame. All because of a lazy money-grab from a large organisation that ought to safe-guard its users better. Oh and to top it all off this was implemented as the email app developer's favourite dark-pattern: the ads look almost exactly like a genuine email.
This kind of immorality has to stop. We also have to educate people about the costs (monetarily, morally and environmentally) of the tech we consume. Because of course running a service like email isn't free, but the contract around selling our attention for advertising and our data never seems to be explicit enough.
I've also witnessed how distracted, frustrated and confused people are becoming by tech. I'm not convinced the AI goldrush (that is heading for an almighty crash) won't just compound these issues. I certainly don't hold out much hope it will at a basic level make technology simpler to use. And when the financial bust of the latest generation of AI comes, I wonder who will get the blame?
It's exhausting. But you know what is even more exhausting? Bottling up these thoughts and feelings. I hope more people write about it like I have here, but what I think is even more important is that we actually start talking to people around us about it.
I think there is a narrative here that's waiting to be brought to the fore. All the 'smack-talk' from the Musks of the world and corporate double-speak from the Zuckerbergs is happening for a good reason: something is beginning to unfold that they are truly terrified of. It is the only thing that will get them to either change their ways or face being usurped in their dominance. Put simply, people are starting to turn their backs on their social media platforms. It's not difficult to see why this is a problem that they'd do anything to remedy: If a business ultimately relies on people's attention to sustain it, when that attention starts to wane it is hard for the business to survive.