I'm all for modern technology. I love the fact that I no longer need to talk to someone when I need to contact my mobile phone company. I can go to the website and click on the ‘chat’ function and have a nice instant messenger style conversation with what for all I know could be a real person. Believe me, it's much more empowering to complain and sound cross with someone when you don't actually have to speak to them.
I love that my phone can guide me from London to Sussex, by way of Reading and Great Yarmouth, without my ever having to unfold a map or identify a local landmark. Map-reading is now skill I boast of in a strictly theoretical sense.
“Of course I can read a map! They taught me in the scouts” is a phrase I often utter, particularly when pouring scorn on those self aware enough to admit that their orienteering skills are sub par.
Technology is such that we now have driverless cars, and, in the area of south London that I call home, delivery robots. These little chaps pootle about on the pavement, even waiting at traffic lights for a safe time to cross. They can carry small parcels to your home from retailers like Amazon and when it arrives at your door it will send you a text with a special code to open the luggage compartment. We will soon live in a world where we'll never have to engage another human being if we do not wish to do so. Maybe Elon Musk is on to something.
All the progress, however, comes at a cost. I'm talking of course about cash. Cash has long been the tool of unscrupulous tradesmen, drug dealers and others trying to hide money from the revenuers. I was at Marylebone station recently and took some cash out as I knew I needed to get a taxi at the other end of my journey. I withdrew £20 and it came as a single £20 note. I was slightly dismayed by this as I figured that this may cause an issue with the cab driver. No matter, I thought, I'll get some breakfast and a coffee and get some change. I ordered a breakfast roll and a flat white and handed over the money.
“Have you got anything smaller, mate?” Asked the gentleman behind the counter, with a bit of a grimace.
"Sorry, no" I replied cheerfully, expecting to receive my coveted small notes.
"Can you pay by card? There's not enough change in the till to break a twenty."
I gaped at the man. This was rush hour, at a busy station in London.
He was apologetic enough, and I had a train to catch. I paid by card.
I grabbed a cab at the station at journey’s end and the driver was one of the most miserable individuals I have ever met. He scowled at me in the rear view mirror for the whole 10 minute journey - to the man’s credit, his peripheral vision was faultless, there wasn't so much as a near miss, despite his constant glaring. When we arrived, I handed the man the £20 (he did not stoop to actually tell me the fee) and he looked at me as if I had handed him an apple with “£5” carved on it, or a used prophylactic.
“I can't take this” growled Mr Personality.
"Sorry, buddy" I shrugged. "I haven't anything smaller."
"You should have told me before you got in, I'll have to take you to a shop to get change now."
"But, it's money!" I exclaimed.
After much muttering and spluttering, the cab driver summoned the Herculean will, reached into his jacket pocket and plucked out an bundle of notes and plucked off three fivers with the same reluctance as a parent asked to choose which of their children should be packed off for life with a Morris dancing troupe.
I may be being overly precious, but when you need announce to a taxi driver before taking a journey that you intend to pay cash, there is something wrong with the world. When a potential client is accountable for ensuring that the service provider, or, as at the station, national pasty brand doesn't have to provide change, we need to take a step back and look at the way the world is developing.
I now read that Sweden is predicted to be a cash-free society by 2030. This is the cost of development. Cash is expensive to print, expensive to store and process, and leaves no paper trail. The disadvantages of cash are myriad, and the benefits of technology obvious. We needn't exclude or isolate those who haven't been to a cash machine. But we need to be careful not to isolate those who aren't comfortable with electronic payments, contactless and ApplePay. A cursory look at the FCO Travel Advice Site lists Angola, Burma & China as just three countries where cash is still king. As technology becomes more important than ever, we must be wary not to let the gap between developed and undeveloped nations become unbridgeable.
It seems we have come full circle, while some vending machines now accept payments through phones and watches, but physical shops & cab drivers need exact change. Maybe Elon Musk has the right idea for the wrong reasons. We should be wary of technology not because AI is poised to take over the world, but because soon you'll need a credit card to buy a cup of coffee.