Unreliable Machines Which Swallows Autonamy For Breakfasts
The order service page owned by some platform tech group, the one my local breakfast restaurant have been reliant on for god knows how many months crashed again today.
Before the staff noticed the dysfunction, my initial takeaway on screen included an egg salad sandwich, a loaf of fried potato and black tea, but I forgot the potato when they hastily asked me to order manually, spending a dollar less doing so. They had a brief moment of panic to show me a paper menu that has dishes not presented on the web page before typing into an old school, palm sized, trustworthy calculator. The system went back online within minutes and the whole ordeal is comfortably dismissed like some minor glitch in the grand scheme of things; a staff showed me the receipt of the expired order to confirm my choices, saving the day with human diligence and care.
(I'd like to clarify that I've been kind to the staff. Expected flawless service because they paid pennies and let out their frustrations to the staff for bad analytics is what insecure and entitled ass-hats do.)
Just like any other digital platform, order service pages seem to be an optimization for the staff and customer's time and effort. The staffs abilities to memorize, calculate, feedback and adjust to incoming requests were slowly outsourced to the platform. But the customer's are still inputing choices of their own...mostly, the digital platform didn't provide more choices, only the illusion of how easy these choices were made.
The old fashioned laminated paper menu isn't interactive in a reactive way, I gotta draw Vs in check-boxes with a crayon to outline choices or wipe them markings off with tissues. Each cognitive adjustment has a higher threshold for intention to form and action to activate, between these micro obstacles we called inconvenience a sense of self interest solidifies: what things do I want, what am I willing to do or not do to get that. On digital menus, tapping and scrolling on interfaces with just my fingertip would result in immediate visual changes signaled by colorful buttons and buffering screens.
"I am able to navigate, modify and manipulate the screen with an outcome of satisfying visuals, therefore I'm in control. Just like in a game, small wins lead to larger ones...I can afford another nothing burger."
This is what the web menu wants us to think before we pick up extra calories we don't really need, while all other options still remain available, seducing us on the side bar to lure out our next "choice".
We're moving into a world where materialistic abundance is gradually replaced by hollowed materialistic promises that we don't really need, get-to-go possibilities tidily shelved behind a glass pane, low hanging holographic fruits with their branches and roots cropped out of reach. The theme of the grand psychosis isn't really greed but something similar: the fear and desires incepted by others that try to tame and profit from us, through the sense of staying in control in the cheapest way to survive. Money is expensive but spending money for ourselves could be an act of cheapness since it's easy to spend it without awareness.
I seem to be shifting away from the topic again. So...the end goal of these automation, self-checkouts or order menus that comes with an app, paying services that requires lengthy contracts for us to trade our information with coupons, is really to tame the work force and milk the customers. It'll be a slow, slow, slow burn. People will become miserable because they're told to believe in that, because they can't picture a rich life with only the essentials. Rather, the concept of essentialness and safety is spoon fed through convenience and overwhelming materialistic abundance.
I begin to enjoy breakfast in smaller restaurants with a modest menu and dusty interiors. They're not glamorous, serve good food, and they won't require login from some socials. Or maybe I'm just romanticizing anything or anyone that isn't gagging on chips and busy shoving LMs under other people's cranium-
Nah...I just don't like being taken advantage of, don't like it when my needs were manufactured instead of diagnosed. And I don't dislike robots or machines, I just have a strong distaste for those which claim to be helpful but operates at the expanse of our autonomy and social fabric.