This post first appeared on the RADIX UK blog.
It occurs to me that – in fact, to give credit in the right place that it occurred first to Sarah – that we know very little about our children’s online lives.
They both use Spotify, which explains their instant access to that particular combination
of musical tastes.
But – and this is where it gets interesting. The older one uses Snapchat and Instagram to keep in touch with friends. The younger one – who appears to be even more Gen Z in his attitudes – used Snapchat and Tiktok (until today, when he deleted them – or so he says). Neither of them use Facebook at all, and they tell me they wouldn’t do.
Nor do their friends. Because Facebook takes ownership of their pictures and thoughts, and they do so for ever. They also use Whatsapp, rather than any more conventional email and they never use Twitter or X, as we must now call it.
Conventional opinion imagines that the new rising generation is completely obsessive about social media, but they aren’t – and neither are their friends.
That isn’t that being young at this point in history is somehow problem-free. The girls seem to go to pieces at 14 or 15 and prefer never to go out. The boys get involved with ‘county lines’ – which seem to be absolutely ubiquitous in Sussex – and spend their school years off their heads.
I exaggerate of course. But that is the tendency. And for some, sadly, it is wholly true.
Writing this blog makes me feel like an old fogie. But the truth is that the generally accepted picture of young people today isn’t that accurate. It certainly doesn’t apply down here.
When they finally get their act together, Generation Z won’t have their youthful indiscretions recorded on Facebook for ever – because they would then be ‘owned’ by Facebook.
And until Facebook and Google start sharing some of the proceeds from their data with the people it has been recorded from, they won’t get the commitment of the next generation.
I am also horribly aware that it is my children’s generation who will have to deal with the toxic tickbox version of IT – which leads inexorably to the phenomenon of the ‘empty’ or ‘absent’ corporation.
The best example I can think of at the moment is the phone company O2.
I am currently locked in mortal combat with this company over an incident in August when, away from home, I made the mistake of negotiating over the phone with their call centre – somewhere in the world – over my younger son’s phone contract.
The result was that, without our knowledge, our address was changed and we were ‘sent’ an advanced model phone – which, needless to say, never arrived with us…
They then loaded the debt onto my son’s account. This isn’t really the place to go into the ins and outs of this business. The key point was that nobody in the company could help me. Certainly nobody in their high street branches, where staff are bizarrely forbidden from intervening when someone has been in touch with the call centre.
I wrote to the managing director, aware that the handful of executives in the company are investigators who handle complaints from his office. I exchanged endless tweets with them and their bots, begging for some kind of reply.
Yet it wasn’t until November – three months later – when anyone got back to me from the company, and he knew nothing about the case.
It transpires that Virgin, a well-known empty corporation – also just a call centre in search of work – bought O2 in 2022. It is clear now that the call centre IS the company.
I also discovered at the weekend that Sarah’s account had also had our address changed to one in Glasgow, and she has also been paying for a state of the art mobile phone which she has never received.
I would like to think that the reason that nobody has been in touch is that they are all so busy investigating their call centre about these frauds – when even the supervisors assured us that the contracts we had received were ‘just marketing’.
But somehow I fear that isn’t the case, and there are just too few middle managers to do anything more than to make sure their automated systems run a little more smoothly for the call centre.
I don’t know how many other people may have been caught in the same scam. If you have an O2 account and you are paying out more money into it than you should – I recommend that you check (and if they did the same to you, please get in touch with me!).
In other words, I am ashamed of the useless, disempowering tickbox systems that my children and their Generation Z friends will have to deal with when they inherit the world. They will not find it easy either. Because they employ so few people, it will be cheaper to run these shiny, heavily marketed tickbox systems where everything seems fine – until, suddenly, it isn’t.
6 comments:
«Neither of them use Facebook at all, and they tell me they wouldn’t do. Nor do their friends. Because Facebook takes ownership of their pictures and thoughts, and they do so for ever. They also use Whatsapp, rather than any more conventional email»
There is a rather important issue across all of these, which is who has possession of the records. For example when you use an e-mail client on your cellphone or PC a record of all received and sent e-mails can be kept in your possession.
Conversely almost all online service, whether WhatsApp, web-mail, online banking, are designed to ensure that only the other side keeps a record of all content and transactions of all users. How important this is? Well, when there is a dispute and only one side has possession of records, things can be quite difficult for the other side, as the Post Office submaster story shows, even if there is "discovery" (which does not exist in the legal systems of many countries).
Consider banking: once upon a time, whether with receipt slips or with passbooks, bank users had a physical record of every transaction in their possession, currently almost all bank users (which *lend* their money to the banks) absolutely trust their debtor banks to keep accurate records. Banks are supervised so there is that, but a lot of non-bank businesses are pretty "informal" with record keeping, even when their employees and managers are not fraudulent, as you discovered with your vicissitudes.
Of course all is well as well no disputes or issues happen. Many punks do feel lucky!
«The key point was that nobody in the company could help me. [...] useless, disempowering tickbox system [...] it will be cheaper to run these shiny, heavily marketed tickbox systems»
I guess that as the author of a book called "Tickbox" you want to related to tickbox systems, but the key aspect is not that they are merely "tickbox" because it is perfectly possible to offer a smooth fail-proof tickbox system with plenty of appropriate options and choices, it is just *expensive* to do that.
The real issue is not that they are "tickbox" systems, but that they are designed to be as cheap as possible, and every option, choice, recovery path, etc. is *expensive*, so they are minimized.
Why is the overriding goal to make those systems as cheap as possible? There are some reasons:
* Unbundling: the average punk just wants the cheapest service possible, and does not care or cannot evaluate ("market for lemons" paper) about the quality of service, so good quality service is "unbundled". There are service providers that sell service contracts with good quality support, up to "VIP concierge" level, they just cost rather more.
* Marketing strategy consultants relatedly talk of segmenting the market with an overall strategy of offering "gold", "silver", "bronze", "iron" plans (like "first rate", "second rate", "third rate", "slum" estates, or "first class", "second class", "third class", "steerage" ship travel). You pay for an "iron" plan but then you expect "gold" service.
* For public services higher income taxpayers are keenly aware that 70% of all income tax is paid by the top 20% of taxpayers, so their demand to the political class is that public services of all types, from the NHS to immigration to schools to public transport, be run as profit centres or at best as "iron" plans for the working class and "bronze" for the lower-middle class, to minimize their tax burden, while they enjoy their "silver" (BUPA) plans if upper-middle class or "gold" (reimbursement) plans if upper class.
«where everything seems fine – until, suddenly, it isn’t.»
That is the eventual endpoint of a race to the bottom: asset stripping, which is the main feature of english economy and politics, eventually results in the failure of the asset being stripped.
Why is there a race to the bottom? Because an ever larger number of people want to maintain the illusion that they can afford "silver" or "gold" level plans, yet they cannot afford them, because for many years the wages which are the incomes of the majority have been flat or falling in real terms, while their costs, the rents and profits they pay to owners of property and businesses have been rising.
Normally if many customers of a service stop being able to afford it the service simply shirnks and continues serving at the same level of quality those remaining customers that can continue to afford it. For example comfortable hotels: the fewer the customers able to afford comfortable hotels the fewer they become, but that does not mean that the quality of service falls for those that remain in business.
But some businesses cannot survive by shrinking: bus service for example is largely used only by lower income people, and if the income becomes lower of their users becomes lower they stop being able to use buses at all. So bus companies make a different choice: they cut service quality, with fewer buses on each route and fewer runs per day, keep running worn out buses, cleaning them less often, etc. in order to become able to offer a lower quality more affordable service to their users.
Reducing service quality to make it more affordable to users whose incomes are withering is what is happening in many cases, not just the NHS or cellphone companies or buses, but also for example for dentists, where many now instead of fixing teeth, which many of their customers can no longer afford, they simply pull them out, as that is the cheaper option.
Again "tickboxing" is just a symptom of shrinking funding pushing service providers towards “cheaper to run”, not something that "just happened" as if by mistake. You want to escape "tickboxing"? Find someone else so generous as to pay to upgrade your plan from "iron" or "bronze" to "silver" or "gold".
«You want to escape "tickboxing"? Find someone else so generous as to pay to upgrade your plan from "iron" or "bronze" to "silver" or "gold".»
Here are what I imagine be the positions of various political persuasions as to that:
* Liberal: there is no problem to solve, because the free markets provide an ample choice of plans on offer and everybody is free to buy the plan that suits them. Also pump up property prices and rents at the expense of the servant classes so our voters can easily afford "silver" and "gold" plans.
* Conservative "tory": the cause is "lazy, overpaid" service workers so make the workers pay by cutting their pay and increasing their hours so more and better service can be done for the same plan price. In the meantime pump up property prices and rents at the expense of the servant classes so our voters can more easily afford "silver" and "gold" plans.
* Conservative "whig": the cause is "lazy, overpaid" service workers so massively expand immigration from areas or outsource service to areas where service workers work harder for lower pay, and the global labour market will solve the problem. In the meantime pump up property prices and rents at the expense of the servant classes so our voters can more easily afford "silver" and "gold" plans.
* "Centrist": "education, education, education" so everybody can become a surgeon or a manager or a CEO or a QC, and afford "silver" and "gold" plans. In the meantime massively expand immigration from areas and outsource service to areas where labour is cheaper and also pump up property prices and rents at the expense of the servant classes so our voters can more easily afford "silver" and "gold" plans.
* Social-democrat: make the "rich" pay a little so tax "silver" and "gold" plans to boost the service levels of "iron" and "bronze" plans. Also stop pumping up property prices and rents so the servant classes can more easily afford to upgrade to "bronze" and "silver" plans.
* Socialist: make the "rich" pay by increasing tax on everybody but especially the rich and by ending subsidising property and finance and then nationalize service plans and make them "silver" for everybody.
thanks Blissex, nice to hear from you again!
So am right in thinking that your final version of service policy (socialist) is what you would advocate? The problem is that socialist approach depends on a kind if any-colour-you-like-as-long-as-its-black - which doesn't recognise individual differences and because of that tend to store up expense for the systen...
n
Also i don't recognise your characterisatoio, of the Liberal approach to services - they are far more interested in individuals the free market stuff you put in their mouth.
«service policy (socialist) is what you would advocate?»
That is what the NHS used to be: a "silver" plan for everybody. My guess is that was unrealistic and the social-democratic version is more plausible in current circumstances.
«The problem is that socialist approach depends on a kind if any-colour-you-like-as-long-as-its-black - which doesn't recognise individual differences and because of that tend to store up expense for the systen...»
I guess that not many people complained about that when the NHS was a "silver" plan for everybody (they seemed to complain more about "postcode lottery" even then, that is too many differences), except of course those who could afford "gold" and "silver" plans and suffered higher taxes to subsidise "silver" plans for everybody.
«Also i don't recognise your characterisatoio, of the Liberal approach to services - they are far more interested in individuals the free market stuff you put in their mouth.»
Here I use "Liberal" in the traditional sense, not as in the LibDem Party (which in principle has a "social-democratic" component). Traditionally as I understand it the Liberal approach is characterised by two concerns:
* That individuals be free to choose (in particular how to spend their money) without collective mandates, and be responsible for their own choices.
* Consequently that "who pays?" is a very important political question, and in particular that making some people pay for the choices of other people violates the individual autonomy of both.
Therefore my understanding of the Liberal position is that individual welfare is an individual, not collective, achievement, and individual charity, as in volunteering extra hours by service employees or volunteering free hours or extra funds by members of the public, is how to achieve higher service quality for those who cannot afford to pay for it themselves, and "the markets" offer that choice.
Post a Comment