Techno-Feudalist Time Theft

"High Tech" means you do "High Amounts of Work"

Before the miracle of the internet, you could order a pizza and expect, by the force of the courts, that it would arrive at your house in thirty minutes or less. Imagine that today. 30 minutes?? That’s barely long enough for your driver to update his app, enter new payment details, tap in coordinates, and update the status of the ride, let alone for you and restaurant to do the same. All tech people who love Snow Crash have to admit: the proof is in the pie.

“Tech” loves tricking us into troubleshooting its machines.

You may be frustrated by the inevitability of your parking app, digital car key, golf reservation website, and self check out kiosk failing to work properly, but shifting the burden for the failure of these products from their makers to you is actually their purpose. They are illusions that magically convince you to do work that companies once did for you. And often, you have to pay to do it.

“Whoops, our bad! Please check back in a few” says the charming, effortlessly sardonic error-page copy that someone like me was paid $2,000 a day to write. But it’s not their bad. The lost cat or confused Corporate Memphis elephant is there to distract you from the fact that this is intentional. You are here to use your labor to figure it out on behalf of the company. This is cutesy techo-feudalism.

It’s a reversal of the analog world, where consumers willingly agreed to upkeep finely made products (see e.g. the right to repair debate). Products were simple and transparent enough to encourage maintenance labor, and we consented. Manufacturers made things as solid as possible, because when they failed, the manufacturer had to pay; to expend their labor and resources to institute a fix. But then they figured out an amazing solution. What if we make people responsible not just for fixing the product, but fixing our company? Your labor is improving not your product, but their app, and thus their business.

Digital tech supposedly does away with inefficiency in the name of more time and less headaches for consumers. In reality, tech products shift not just repair costs, but product development costs to the consumer. They force us to initiate unplanned and often incomprehensible repair actions ourselves.

Self checkout software not working? Not our problem, that’s your problem. You have to stand there shouting for the sole employee remaining in the entire grocery store. You pay with your time and your energy to figure out their failure. The company has zero incentive to cure. They’re not penalized in the least, whether you stand there for 30 seconds or 30 minutes. It’s all to their benefit, because your labor has been passively hijacked for their bottom line.

Here’s a clear example: Digital touch-to-start car keys are now the standard. They are supposed to make our lives easier. Look, no hands!

• But this is a trick. Digital keys are far costlier to replace. If you lose or break one, it will cost $200-300–many hundreds of times more than a metal key. Wait, I thought these invisible digital materials were magically cost-free. Why is it more expensive? Because it’s super tech-y! That's why!

• When a metal key malfunctioned (virtually never) it cost you $10 maximum to replace at any nearby key shop. There were no batteries, they could last forever.

• A digital key runs out of batteries. You have to navigate your way back to the dealership, or a key maker who replaces the battery. The battery is cheap, but the time is not.

• Inevitably, the replacement battery somehow screws up the connection to the car—so now the key works sometimes and sometimes doesn’t. You pair the key with the car every single time you get in now, because it’s lost its tether when and aftermarket battery doesn’t fit into the compartment correctly. You have to repeatedly press and reconnect the key every time you approach the car.

• The key is now “broken”—should be the manufacturers problem, a defective key—but no, it’s simple “dead” and to replace it you must now pay $300. Because it’s high tech, you see! But you yourself receive zero of the efficiency benefit of the keyless key—100% of it goes to the manufacturer, and you’re stuck with the time bill and the bill bill. You spend the time of driving to the dealer, which also only has one employee left, and waiting in line for them to reprogram the key. This could take an entire day.

The complexity of tech means that you are dependent on the manufacturer, while the manufacturer disavows all responsibility to you. He has no incentive to help you more quickly—the fewer people he can get to work at the dealership, the better for him. He has no actual reason to make your life easy. In reality, when you buy a “smart” product—the smarts being used are yours. You use your brain to make them work. Analog products were not like this.

We are forced into unpaid labor on behalf of the machines. If tech products were optional, they’d have leg to stand on, but let’s not pretend—they’re not. At your kid’s daycare, you must use the never-has-worked-properly-one-single-time specialized kids-daycare-check-in app, so some investor can have access to your kid’s every move and sell that information to advertisers—because apparently a paper check in list was deeply inefficient. Or imagine your bluetooth headphones; how many times have them become somehow unplugged from the computer—this is your time you ahve to put in to fixing them. But can you return them? No. It’s just “part of thep ? This is not a bug, but a feature of these products. They’re supposed to not work, that’s how the SaaS “builder” gets to markup his valuation 7x and keep spending Sequoia Capital’s money while the paper manufacturer gets imprisoned for anti-dumping violations in Bangladesh. It is intentional time theft, and it’s why so few of these technologies have made us any more “free” in any cognizable way. Rather, they’ve made us more busy and more tired. That’s because we’re working harder for them.

PS: Yes, many of you will say “bro you have a metal key inside your digital car key if you prefer it so much”. First of all, these silly little half-keys are very difficult to use. Secondly, exactly—the manufacturer has merely couched an analog solution in an illusion of “high tech”—when all “high tech” really means is you do the work.