The Internet Of Things We Might Not Want

I've just listened to a Radio 4 programme where a panel discussed how to tighten up online security as people attach more and more 'things' to the internet such as their kettle, toothbrush, toaster and fridge/freezer.

Not once did anyone ask why. WHY? Why would any human being wish to connect their kettle, toothbrush, toaster or fridge/freezer to the internet?

I have just asked the internet this question and found a site with various explanations for five year olds, all enthusing how 'exciting' and 'useful' it will be to have all our objects smartified so that they can talk to us/each other and save us time and trouble.

• Your toothbrush will be able to tell you when you've spent the full two minutes cleaning your teeth (er, mine has already has a 2-minute buzzer)
• Your toaster will be able to tell you when your toast is ready (mine pops)
• Your kettle will be able to tell you when the kettle has boiled (way ahead of you there - mine clicks off!)
• Your fridge/freezer will be able to tell you you're out of orange juice and order the supermarket to deliver some more (just the one carton? How inefficient. And what if I fancy apple or mango juice instead?)

Even devices controlling our central heating are hardly necessary when we have timers to do that. Smart meters for utilities are equally redundant when most of us already switch things off when we're not using them for cost reasons and they haven't been shown to result in smaller (or more comprehensible) bills. Plus more reliance on devices rather than common sense does not, ironically, make bills smaller or us greener.

Nor does our garage door need its own internet connectivity or account in my view.

The one such application I can see that might be useful is tracking devices for pets to prevent them from getting lost or stolen. However pets are sentient beings, not inanimate household objects.

A friend bought a fertility thermometer and found she was meant to connect it to an app and enter all her (and her partner's) most intimate details into it. She was not impressed. Why could the information SHE needed not be incorporated into the thermometer in a simple daily readout of Fertile Today or Not Fertile Today? That's all she wanted. What would they do with all the data she supplied to their website? She had not agreed to be part of any mass research trial regarding fertility (or whatever their motives were). She could soon contact them to complain if the thermometer failed.

We have already witnessed seemingly innocuous geneaology sites, ostensibly to help people trace their family tree, turning into sinister DNA databases amassing samples worthy of any criminal database, and with the ability to sell them on for all kinds of purposes such as medical, travel and other insurance, prospective employee screening etc.

Meantime my phone remains unconnected to my bank account and I will not be letting Alexa into my life any time soon.

Every internet contact is a security breach risk and everything sold to us as 'convenience' could (and doubtless will) be used for a whole lot more without our consent, to one day control us in ways we cannot currently dream of.

Moreover is it wise to start letting devices and apps do more and more of our basic thinking for us? How dumb do we want to become? Completely-reliant-on-technology-for-everything-dumb?  I have always resisted a SatNav, precisely because I don't want to lose my map reading skills, which by and large, perform just as well and have never led my vehicle down a harbour slipway or any of the other reported mishaps ascribed to SatNavs.

In fact I've started turning my wifi off every night as it is not just security risks which are assuming more and more concern, but the potential damage that constant bombardment of Electro-Magnetic Fields (EMF's) may be doing in close proximity to our natural bodily EMF. The jury may still be out as we have not been under artificial EMF bombardment long enough to find out the long term effects. However it has always been recommended to keep mobile phones at least an inch away from the body and how many people do even that? I often recall a cousin who acquired a terminal brain tumour within a year of acquiring his first mobile phone twenty years ago. Of course it could have been a co-incidence, but he was noticeably in love with this gizmo (still a novelty at the time when whole offices shared one mobile for going out and about) and had it clamped to his ear a lot of the time and within a year he was dead at 37.

A Silicon Valley insider shares his experiences of EMFs here.

When I was around 20 and internet cafes started springing up because few people then had home access, I remember the internet being sold to us as something which would help us and give us lots of extra consumer choice. It would be a useful tool in our lives.

Not once were we warned that the internet might one day take over, closing our banks, post offices, ticket offices and shops and removing all other consumer choices from us including (eventually) the ability to pay in cash or by cheque. That one day Silicon Valley would rule the world and even encourage social isolation. Or that many of its designers were nerds who desired to minimise the need for human contact in their own lives and were designing the same for the rest of us aka the 'contactless' world. Consent for this to happen was neither asked or given and there was no political referendum on it either.

For all the undoubted advantages of the internet, I feel we've been mis-sold it and it should have been kept at 'useful tool' stage. Certainly every update on my computer seems to lead to it being less user-friendly rather than more and I suspect most updates are not for my benefit at all.

Contactless World

Some individuals may feel they already live in a contactless world, without meaningful relationships in their lives, and even going days without talking to another human being, particularly if constrained by physical or mental health issues.

Many doubtless lack the comforting touch of a pet, never mind a human being. Moreover, it may have nothing to do with age. There is an alarming rise in depression and loneliness in the young too, no matter that their Facebook output may paint a picture of enviable perfection. Even a third of middle-aged Brits are now living alone.

Well here is the bad news. The world is set to get a whole lot more contactless.

We have become a more tolerant society to those who might once have found themselves on the margins (and rightly so), but meantime we have seen families, churches, communities and most elements that used to bind people together and offer a solid support structure swept away. Nor does a job for life exist any more.

In a so-called green age, we have seen the rise of the ruthless and throwaway society which extends to people too - at both ends of life. We are constantly encouraged to 'get over' and 'move on' irrespective of whether we are mourning a relationship break up or a deceased loved one. Most of us now spend more time on social media exchanging opinions and funny photos with random strangers than we do nurturing our real life friends and relationships. Social media also gives the opportunity for some anonymous trolling, when not virtue-signalling or falling out with someone over some trivial difference of opinion. It is no accident that mental health issues have risen in almost direct proportion to screen addiction.

Meantime the creep of the cashless society is afoot. Forget maintaining control over your finances, Silicon Valley won't stop driving cash out of town until they own us, lock, stock and barrel and can charge what they want for all the currently free services they have got us addicted to and on every other transaction too. Not so long ago the banks ruled the world. Then they became casinos and crashed, leaving the pitch wide open to the electronic players.

Some people call this 'progress' but I think we swallow the sugar-coated pill called 'convenience' at our peril. If cash goes, we will see even more social isolation and societal disenfranchisement. From children no longer receiving pocket money to homeless and other vulnerable individuals suffering and starving and charity donations taking a nosedive. The excuse is that banning cash will destroy the black economy and force everyone to pay their taxes leading to a more equal society, though as long as corporations are let off the hook and Russian gangsters are allowed to buy up half of London, this is patently untrue. Notwithstanding, preliminary trials and experiments in other countries have demonstrated that the black economy simply goes underground and finds a new way to operate, just as it always has, even if they have to start using another currency or create their own. In the legal world going paperless can backfire as we have seen with the road tax disc which used to have to be prominently displayed in every vehicle by law. Since scrapping this paper disc in 2014, yet continuing to require all vehicle keepers to carry on buying it in ethereal form, our government has lost £80m in revenue and counting. If no vehicle displays one, where is a parking enforcer to start in scanning every last vehicle on a daily basis to ensure compliance? Particularly when they have parking ticket targets to reach!

I have never been more grateful to see my new (and probably last) cheque book arrive in the post this morning. I may not write many cheques, but I still value them for some transactions but what I value even more is having the CHOICE as a consumer. When I grew up (not so long ago), being issued with your first cheque book was an important right of passage into the adult world. Credit cards were generally used for big ticket items and travel and only tended to be issued to home owners in their forties. No one my age had one.

So not content with the attack on the cheque book (thankfully postponed owing to public outcry), we see our bank and Post Office branches closing down, our free ATM's under threat and our bank notes reduced to toy town money. Meanwhile our parking machines are being turned into card/phone payment only, travel  and theatre ticket office closures force us to use our cards and pay 'booking fees' and we are propelled to the self-service checkouts in stores (contactless) and encouraged to use contactless cards (despite the warnings of security experts) so that onlife shopping becomes as soulless as online shopping.

Electronic payments may be seen as convenient by some, but what happens when they go wrong and you have a faceless non-accountable organisation to argue with to get your overpayment back? A mistake on a card is so much harder to rectify than getting the wrong change back in a cash transaction. And let's not forget the fees, fees, fees on virtually every transaction, as if they are doing you a favour by sacking all their staff and replacing them with machines! In addition I have seen so many passengers with bus ticket apps whose phones fail them when getting on a bus to the point they often have to pay cash anyway! I have also never bought a train ticket online or via a machine which was cheaper than the one I queued to pay a clerk in a booth for, a human being who can advise me on the best prices, times and routes. Self-service is NOT service. I may not be an old lady yet, reliant on a shop transaction as my only human interaction of the day, but as a human being I still demand to be served by other human beings. We have also seen whole systems brought to a halt by hackers and this risk can only increase, aside from all the individual cases of online fraud, which experts admit, are becoming ever cleverer and harder to avert. But at least the banks are currently obliged to try to offer some assistance and compensation. Who will help and protect consumers when Silicon Valley has taken their place and they operate entirely outside UK legislation?

Anyway. let's not kid ourselves. All the free goodies we enjoy on the internet now are but a 'gateway drug'  to lead us up the garden path to the hardcore reality of a contactless, control-less future which not only charges us at every turn but can cut us off electronically and condemn us to an electronic gulag cast out from society if we do anything to displease its masters! Hence I am writing this blog while I can!

The sexual world has become such a minefield, society almost deems it more desirable to go contactless there too, with live webcam shows and pernicious free porn, lest the brush of a real life knee or waist is misinterpreted, and which can doubtless only lead to disappointment after a hardcore porn addiction, when it is not! On a related note, the teenage pregnancy rate in UK has almost halved since the advent of social media as young girls would seemingly rather flirt online than meet boys in real life. Online, girls can control their image, so presumably those who don't match up to their glamorous photo-shopped selfies or made up personas can stay safe!

Finally, lest we get any ideas about remaining in the driving seat of our own lives, we have the joys of self-driving vehicles being foisted upon us - ostensibly to prevent accidents - but in reality we will most certainly be tracked and charged for whatever by whomever at will and there won't be a damn thing we can do about it! And what if the car is still involved in an accident or traffic violation? Who or what will be held responsible?

I can't wait!

Meantime I shall carry on being the cash backlash, watching my old skool DVD/VHS collection, reading my paper books (mine, all mine, for you never own electronic data!), meeting friends IRL (in real life) and supporting my High Street, whilst ensuring I keep my mobile notifications firmly switched OFF, for that way madness lies. Nor have I any intention of ever connecting my mobile phone to my bank account and indulging in phone apps. It may not be off-grid living exactly, but I choose real life insofar as it still exists. As the famous scene in Network declares; 'I'm a human being goddammit!'

For those who share my concern that we are sleepwalking into an unelected world we have diminishing personal control over under the guise of 'progress', I recommend reading The War Against Cash by Ross Clark and Done by Jacques Peretti. (available in all good bookshops too - support them while they last!)