Digital dystopia or inevitable progress?
This short video shows a vision of one of the futures, possibly the near-future, that could evolve out of where we are now. A young woman goes about her day with the help of her smartphone. It’s a bit like that drawing which changes according to how it’s viewed: a bistable illusion. You look at it one way and you see a young, elegantly attired woman. Look at it another and it’s an old woman with a hooked nose and a grave expression. Progress or dystopia?
One of the most disturbing things about returning to Britain after a year and half away has been the marked increase in automation and digital payment.
It’s most apparent in central London and around transport hubs. One Sainsbury’s I entered (and left without purchase) now resembles an airport furnished with confectionary. Customers are corralled into a narrow queuing area, the snaking kind that makes you walk back on yourself, through rows of highly packaged products. At the end, you are directed to banks of self-service checkouts which are largely card-only. In the distance, behind a large plastic screen, someone stands in front of the alcohol and tobacco. Otherwise the only human presence is the black-clothed security man.
Elsewhere, formerly-loved cafes have gone card-only. And everywhere people are paying by waving a card or phone across a device. They include children of about twelve, presumably using their parents’ cards to get what they want. Meanwhile, chains such as Starbucks are testing the public appetite for a cashless society.
In the few months I’ve been back in Britain, surveillance in stores has increased dramatically. Recently cameras appeared in three of my local Tescos above the self-service checkouts. A little larger than a tablet, these screens record the face and movements of the customer close-up. (The photo doesn’t quite capture how intrusive they are because my old-school privacy instincts prevent me from getting too close to my subjects.) Initially, I put the trend down to concerns about shoplifting in south London. But then I walked into the Coop in the Cotswold town where I used to live and found cameras there too. ‘Oh, it’s just security,’ said the shop assistant airily. ‘They’re to stop people leaving without paying.”
I was surprised. Part of the reason I’d moved to the town was the placidity of life among its honey-coloured houses. ‘There has been no crime in Bradford-on-Avon today,’ the local police once tweeted.
These trends have been in the making for some time. A quick internet search reveals that Tesco introduced surveillance over their self-checkouts in 2018, 2020 and 2021, provoking complaints from customers and data protection bodies. The cameras were withdrawn but are now back again: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again … Meanwhile, the Southern Coop has introduced facial recognition cameras into some of its stores and is allowing staff to blacklist customers without their consent.
It seems like it was only five minutes ago that recording people in public was uncool in an anti-democratic kind of way. There were also concerns about how images of children and young people might be used. Researching in Spain in 2019, I was told that taking someone’s photo in public without their permission was illegal. In Britain, while freedom of photography prevails, it has long been considered courteous to let people know if they are being filmed as part of a group and give them the chance to opt out.
The lack of debate about these seismic changes to the way we live is quite baffling.
The implications of digital dependence are multiple and far-reaching. Foremost is the growing reliance on technology which could fail for many reasons, either for an individual whose phone is lost, broken or uncharged, or for a geographical area suffering a power cut. Without cash, people would have no means of trade. Then there’s the exclusion of those who don’t have access to banks or cards: Christian the travelling van man who featured in my last Substack told me how recently he’d taken a train to volunteer at a festival. He couldn’t buy a cup of tea because they wouldn’t take his cash.
For all of us, digital payment brings about a subtle but definite shift in the relationship between buyer and seller. With cash, it’s clear there’s an exchange taking place and it’s difficult for the customer not to be aware of what they’re spending, at least in their own currency. But with digital payments, the amount is in the hands of the party taking payment. Have you ever okayed a purchase in a gloomy interior without being sure of the exact amount? Or swiped a contactless card not knowing the price? I know I have.
We are told these changes are for our security, will increase levels of convenience and in any case are due to the inevitable march of ‘progress’.
Security, Convenience, Progress. What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot already has.
For the full version of this essay, go to Ways of Seeing on Substack.
