TOOTHPASTE, PARKING APPS, VAR and ENSHITTIFICATION

What was so hard about squeezing a tube? The toothpaste pump dispenser turned an everyday, intuitive action into a contrived solution for a problem no one had. It wasn’t about making life easier; it was about creating the illusion of innovation.?

The classic tube already did its job. Yet somehow, we were convinced that pressing a plastic pump was progress. Instead of enhancing convenience, it introduced its own foibles, uneven dispensing, wasteful residue, and the inevitable frustration of extracting the last bit and not knowing when it’s nearly empty. Technological innovation that makes something worse.

In further toothpaste tech progress, the most recent advancement is the wall-mounted or counter-top automatic toothpaste dispenser. This iteration dispenses the toothpaste as the user presses the toothbrush against the inside plates of the dispenser, so it automatically squeezes an appropriate amount of toothpaste and avoids waste for maximum efficiency and precision. Most models incorporate a toothbrush holder, and in some of the advanced models, the holder also functions as a toothbrush sanitiser.

The automatic dispenser combo is, of course, most effective when combined with a smart toothbrush. Even our dental hygiene needs a Wi-Fi connection, apps,? real-time brushing feedback and personalised oral care algorithms.? Yer stone-age ancestors managed to keep their teeth relatively clean with twigs and animal hair, my dog has better teeth than me and he just chews a dried pig’s ear, but this is where we are.

The beach where I take the dog for walks has a small car park, which takes about 50 cars and has been free forever. One half of the beach is just a regular beach, and hidden round the corner is the naturist beach.? In a spontaneous display of collective defiance and solidarity, dog walkers and naturists alike staged a sustained rebellion against the council's attempt to digitise and monetise parking through a QR code and smartphone app system. Without any centralised organising, everyone that used the beaches simply refused to play ball with the parking ‘solution’, opting instead for the revolutionary act of... just parking their cars and fuck-the-parking-app. The council's grand plan began to unravel. The app sat unused, a testament to the power of collective indifference. This mini-act of defiance represents a successful resistance against the encroachment of technology and bureaucracy into public spaces. By flatly refusing to engage with the council's digital parking solution, these citizens effectively rejected the commodification of their leisure time - the parking app represents an attempt to insert a technological intermediary into the simple act of visiting a beach, transforming a direct experience into one mediated by digital interfaces and data collection.

By collectively refusing to participate, the dog walkers and naturists demonstrated the reclamation of historical life - the ability of people to shape their environment and social conditions through direct action.

I’m marking this one up as a small but significant victory against the integrated spectacle of modern society, where surveillance and bureaucracy increasingly permeate all aspects of life

The thing is, technology, even at its most innocuous, has a knack for creating solutions to problems that didn’t exist, layering unnecessary complexity onto life’s simplest tasks. It’s a pattern that repeats everywhere.

Is it the integrated spectacle? Or just enshittification.?

I love that term. Cory Doctorow coined it in 2022, and it’s since been crowned Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024, embodying our collective exasperation with tech that makes things worse rather than better.

Doctorow sketches the enshittification cycle as a predictable three-act drama:

Act I - Platforms woo users with the promise of a digital utopia.

Act II - Once the audience is locked in, they pivot, prioritising monetisation over users.

Act II - They wring out every last cent from both users and businesses

We’ve seen this grim play unfold on every stage of the digital ecosystem, from Facebook to YouTube and Amazon. Amazon, once the paragon of customer-first excellence, now feels like a flea market overrun by low quality ads and moody vendors.?

Now the enshittification virus is breaking out of the world of apps and platforms and infecting everything that’s tethered to tech.?

That was a long-way-round intro to telling you I’m halfway through Daisy Christodoulou’s outrageously great book, I Can't Stop Thinking About VAR.? She brilliantly dissects VAR’s unintended consequences, a technology that has irrevocably altered the fabric of football. Basically, no one in the game wants VAR in its current form. Fans hate it, players hate it, coaches hate it, and referees hate it.

A teacher by trade (now ex-teacher), Christodoulou gained some notoriety by speaking up against some of the establishment's views on what/how kids learn in one of her other books,?Seven Myths about Education. She is also?a West Ham United season ticket holder so the authentic punter POV makes her argument even more credible.

The basic thesis posits that the problem with VAR isn’t that it's inaccurate- it’s that it’s too accurate.

(We've seen countless examples of the killer defence-splitting ball played in behind from midfield for the striker to run on to, deftly chipping the goalkeeper then the goal chalked off after a seven minute delay because his finger was offside.)

By dissecting every frame, VAR has turned moments of poetic magic into tedious forensic exercises. That euphoric eruption when the ball hits the back of the net? Now it’s muted, held hostage by an invisible, officious tech spectre. Every celebration exists in a Schr?dinger-like limbo until VAR collapses the wave function.

VAR is total enshittification, reminding us that sometimes (often), imperfections are the point.?What if clubs, refs and fans did a bit of their own reclamation of historical life? Just refuse to use it?

Christodoulou’s book isn’t just about football. It’s a broader meditation on progress and its unintended consequences. In our relentless pursuit of quantified perfection, we paradoxically only succeed in making things a bit more shit.