Johnny Fallon: Convenience of modern life is not something to be complacent about

If you are talking to someone with their head in a phone it’s because you are not any more interesting than their phone.

I went for a haircut in Longford recently. It should have been a fairly simple job. On the way I realised I had forgotten my wallet in my other jacket, but as I was nearly in town, I went on. The barber confirmed he only took cash. No matter, Longford probably has more barbers per square foot than anywhere else in the world. On I went. Every single one, cash only. Exasperated and without an ATM card I asked one why I couldn’t pay with my phone and what was the point in being cash only when bank charges to business for cash handling match anything for cards.

Clearly, this man didn’t know me and jauntily replied that it was ‘better to be cash when Revenue were about’.

Hilarious. Call me old fashioned, but I kind of like schools, hospitals and gardaí so I’m not a fan of trying to get out of paying tax. Anyway, I went home defeated and hairy.

On return, I opened my social media to find the usual bunch of faces I know complaining about various things in the modern world. Card payments, phones, self-service tills, the internet, artificial intelligence, online shopping. One would be forgiven for thinking we lived in some kind of modern hellscape where society had broken down.

The fact is though that all these changes are there for a reason. People use them and like them. And no amount of online (oh the irony) lecturing is going to change that, they are here to stay because they work. 

But guess what? I love it. I love it and I am not alone in that, and the present and the future is an awful lot better than the past.

I thought back to days I remembered that some people seem so fond of. The nights getting soaked in town looking for what we called a ‘Drinklink’ (or ATM) to withdraw a few bob. ‘How much should I take out? I don’t want loads of cash on me it’s dangerous, I might lose it, but I don’t want to run out of money and have to go back.’ Choices, confusion and queues, Oh man, did I hate those queues. Then pockets full of change and coins nobody ever wanted.

Nowadays, my money is accessible when I want where I want. I also get to feel like a wizard waving the phone about. My only problem now is having to wait behind the person who insists on fumbling through their wallet when we could be through ten people in a queue if they just held out their phone. Now of course we make exceptions for people like the elderly. But I’ll be honest, many of them are quicker to adapt than some middle-aged people and we can more than cope with being understanding and facilitating the elderly if the rest of us would get on with things at other times.

To avoid this, I go to the self-service checkout. Oh, but wait. aren’t these another modern scourge? Don’t they ruin all the jobs? Well leaving aside the rather healthy employment figures I thought on this bit too. No, I don’t miss a grumpy interaction at the till. I get interaction elsewhere thank you. The self-service tills are far from perfect. I often curse at the unexpected item in the bagging area but wonderfully the machine is not offended by my reaction and we figure out the issue and move on. 

I’m done faster and simpler than all those endless queues in other stores, especially the ones where the shop assistant fires your shopping at you like its coming from a machine gun and you both get in a competitive race to see who can wildly throw your shopping about and land it in a bag.

At the heart of this is my phone. I love it. I don’t want some detox time. I don’t want to be without it. I am perfectly happy to have it with me. My mental health is fine. I sleep soundly drifting off to an audiobook every night. Now people tell you the phone is killing conversation. Invariably these people who are less interesting than a cat picture.

They say people used to talk in doctor’s surgeries or on buses but now they all have their heads in their phone. Guess what? Back before phones these were the very people the rest of us were all complaining about getting stuck talking to. Doctor’s surgeries and buses were a nightmare for people randomly forcing their idle conversation upon you. There is nothing wrong with quality conversation happening when two people have something to say and both are interested. It happens all the time. If you are talking to someone with their head in their phone it’s because you are not more interesting than a phone. That’s a low bar, raise your conversation don’t blame the phone.

As a rural dweller, I remember having local shops in middle of the country. Of course, once everybody got a second car and could drive people understandably saved money by travelling into local towns to get much better value. While it made sense it was accepted even though we often missed those rural shops for the convenience of not having to go to town sometimes.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

But those occasions weren’t enough to warrant paying much higher prices all the time. But the businesses in town shed no tears as the raked in the rural customers. Now as a rural dweller I can shop online and my shopping comes to me. It can be delivered to my door (by the way lots of jobs created in all that too). Rural dwellers no longer are forced into town.

Now some of those town stores are a bit upset. Local stores are online, especially the good ones, and I can support them right from my sofa, but there are some stores though that just don’t want to do it. That is their choice. I shop online and can still shop local but it’s nice to know that when I can’t get what I want locally I have a world of choice elsewhere. Online shopping is the future because it works. You can rail against it all you want but you will be a T-rex shouting at a fiery sky. It’s time to adapt because it isn’t going away and that’s because it works.

These old days that people are fond of recalling (usually while boasting that their parents slapped them, that they rode a bike with no helmet, and burned their rubbish on the fire) were not all that great. The past was a place I recall as lacking choice, lacking convenience, and designed to trap you and force you into certain actions or conversations you never wanted. Every change is feared. Artificial intelligence is the next thing. It won’t go away either.

Neither will it replace all the jobs or give us more free time. Like everything else in history, it will just change what we do and how we do it. So, I’m no spring chicken anymore but I love this world. I love that we are trying to change it for the better and I see a generation of young people that are as good if not better than any before. So, the changes are here to stay, enjoy them. The future is bright and most of us are quite happy in it.