2023-07-22
It's day 52 since I've retired my smartphone. It's going well. Now and then I admit that it would be honestly useful to have it, but these moments pass quickly. I don't miss it.
However, recently we were pratically forced to switch it on and use it just for one single application. Luckily we were prepared for this.
When we went on our vacation recently, we took a ferry to the lovely danish island of Bornholm. Apparently the only way to get a ticket for the ferry is to book it on the web. Here in turn we found, that the only possible option for payment is by credit card, requiring two factor authentication. 2FA finally requires the use of a smartphone app, that's only available on Google Play.
As I said, we were prepared, and enjoyed our vacation so much. It was the best.
But let me unpack this once more:
Using the Bornholm Ferry requires you having an account with Google or Apple, with all the tracking and advertising, privacy and dependency problems that ensue.
Since: no Google/Apple account, no App Store, no 2FA, no credit card payment, no ticket, no ferry, no island ...
Well, almost. I'll come to that in a moment.
I'm pretty sure this not what folks really want, even the good people at Bornholmslinjen. But I'm also sure that the majority of smartphone users (people for that matter) are not even aware of this chain of dependencies. It's an example of how our lives are essentially controlled by those multinational data corporations. Think about it. If you deny using their services, you can't do certain things, you never thought would depend on your relationship to Google. Seems wrong? Well, I think it is!
Almost, as I said: When we arrived at the automated check in to the ferry, we found that there's a vending machine that would have taken our good old debit cards. But how would you know?!
Maybe we're not cool enough for a live without smartphones just yet?
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Copyright: ~lkh • Sa. Juli 22 08:11:17 CEST 2023 • License: CC BY-NC 4.0 • Hosted by: SDF-EU Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf-eu.org