This is Not a Touchscreen: Life in the Interim of Things

This is one of my favorite pieces. A better edited version of this ran as the Foreword in GQ in August. I can't see it online, so I can't link to it, but it's a great magazine that we should all read.

The greasy fingerprints told only half the tale. Large plasma screens littered the departure lounge, but despite (or possibly because of) their oversized font, the perfect height of the monitors, and the very slow refresh rate of data, affixed to each and every one was a peeling printed label: “This is not a touchscreen.”

Digital disappointment surrounds us. Everything should be faster, more accurate, and personalized. Anything new progresses from magical to wonderful to expected to disappointing in a matter of moments. In the words of Louis C.K., “How quickly the world owes us something we didn’t even know existed five minutes ago.” 

The only things that consistently move faster than technological advancements are the expectations of them. The lag delays further, the gap between what we expect and what we get grows larger, and delight fades quickly to disappointment. It’s getting worse.

My phone can access everything ever made by anyone anywhere immediately — but why is this taking so long? When I can get 4G on the Shanghai underground, why can’t I get reception in the elevator? Why can’t I stream this abroad? But my other bank uses Touch ID. You don’t have Uber here yet? Why can’t you remember my username? And for all the promise of big data, my credit card provider is still sending monthly sign-up offers by mail. 

Surrounded by mismanaged expectations, the beat of modern life is disappointment: the flights we can’t change online, the lost bookings, the out-of-order signs on the new iPads in Argos, unexpected errors, software glitches, blue screens of death, and endless tapping become the punctuation to our days. 

The younger we are, the worse it is. The more incredulous we are to things that don’t fit our expectations, the stronger the frustration from the knowledge of how things can be. For a generation of people, spoiled by the most incredible technology quietly working away in the background, there is no room for wonder. Technology for many is something we only notice when it’s not working. Toddlers look aghast that the TV isn’t touch enabled. Teens are exasperated that angry tweets are not replied to within minutes. And it's only spreading upward. As companies built for the modern age slowly replace their industrial incumbents, we now see each best-in-class experience as the standard for all.

If Uber can show me the driver's car, name, phone number, and rating in real time, how can the New York Subway not know where half their trains are, let alone tell me when to expect the next one? If Google traffic can aggregate all car movements to show me a near exact arrival time, why does American Airlines think this gate is boarding? Amazon can fly me a marble chopping board overnight from Kansas to New York City, but my local clothing retailer doesn’t know if they’ve got a size large in stock. 

Retargeted ads can note exactly what I am interested in, attach cookies to my behavior, buy automatically advertising inventory, and create custom built advertising units within milliseconds, but only so far as to show me the item I just bought and currently have less interest in buying than at any other time in my life. The expression “the future is already here, just not evenly distributed” has never been more true, but our expectations don’t work this way. And as technology makes more and more amazing things and every industry gets its unicorn startup, digital disappointment continues to grow. 

Adding to this is asymmetry, as the process of technological disruption reaches maturity in some industries while it hasn't even begun in others. 

Arguably first came music. We went from cassettes and skipping CD’s to MP3 players, and then the whole world of music entered its crappy interim with illegal streaming from Napster. Then iTunes expensively hosted fractions of music catalogues before Nokia and Pandora brought streaming to the masses and created what is now an environment that works superbly for users (and terribly for bands). The porn and news industries followed, and we now get access to all content from everywhere, in abundance and typically paid for (poorly) with our attention. Retail came next, and, thanks to Amazon, Tesco, Ocado, JustEat, and many more, we’re now over served as customers by companies that struggle to make money.

We’re now left with the laggards: banks that refuse to see the future and insist on maintaining High Street locations rather than perfecting customer service; insurance companies that refuse to accept the changing world of Zipcar and Airbnb; healthcare systems based on paper; and immigration and tax policies yet to accept that planes and the internet exist or that jobs can be freelanced. 

We have TV companies scared of what streaming did to music, border officials who trust paper passports over fingerprints, and payment systems that still think a pen stroke is more secure than TouchID. We have car companies that refuse to recognize that we need places to hold our iPhones and that focus on 0-60 times rather than the dysfunctional dashboard panels. We have smart homes that require 11 taps to turn on a light and routinely don’t work while we wait to install updates. And 3D printers can make everything in the world — except a compelling reason to own one. 

Right now, life has never felt more complex, more messy, or more disjointed. It's systems, protocols, and platforms in their early stages. It’s wiring that doesn’t connect, least of all with our needs. We talk endlessly about the internet of things, but we’re not there yet. At some point everything should connect and just work, but before then, we’re stuck between the dumb and the smart. It's the very worst times — the interim of things.