The Peril of Entire Systems Digitization

In 2024, I will walk into a physical space—a restaurant, a hairdresser, an arts venue, an artisanal cheese shop—and instead of being handed a physical piece of paper with some useful information on it, or being told it in words, I will be shown a faded roundel with a QR code on it. I will hold my phone’s camera up to it wearily. Sometimes it will work, but the font on the menu or the information will be small. I’ll have to enlarge it and take my glasses off to read it, because I’ve reached that age. Sometimes it won’t work at all. Sometimes the information on it will be out of date.

We’ve reached a tipping point in the creep of conducting our daily interactions through screens, and it threatens to exclude everyone but those with the “right” access.

In every scenario, a large number of people—older adults, those with access requirements, kids, and anyone who simply doesn’t want to look at their phone all the time—will be encouraged to spend more time idly staring at screens and to avoid the kind of quick, cordial encounters with other people that make us all feel like we belong. By then, we’ll have overdone our digitalization.

It’s not that there aren’t more gains to be made in technology. Incredible things are happening in biotech, especially since the pandemic. The world of continuous glucose monitors and lateral flow tests (LFT) will keep growing. In 2024 we will see new kinds of LFTs that test for other infections and problems. We will see more useful work in truly personalized medicine. But in the UK, at least, the benefit of those innovations will be increasingly available only for those who can pay for it themselves. The division between the technological haves and have-nots will only continue to grow.

And although technology will continue to flourish, my guess is that the truly big gains in digital communication have now been made for a generation. If there’s innovation to come in digital communication it will be in the field of over digitization, using screens where paper and actual words from real people both work better. We could—and should—use this next decade to shore up the gains we’ve made for all members of society. But I predict that, in 2024, we won’t. The Good Things Foundation estimates that 10 million people in the UK lack the basic digital skills needed to access the modern world. And 6.9 million people will continue to be excluded if they’re not given proactive help. But the current British government doesn’t seem much interested in raising the floor for the worst off.

concepts like “why not let people order a coffee while they’re getting their hair done, using a QR code!” are unable to accomplish these things. Incorrigibly urban readers like me find these kinds of things appealing, but businesses rarely consider how to assist customers who aren’t willing to spend money with them or who are too turned off by ostentatious digital displays to visit physical stores.

There is of course one thing I can predict with total certainty for the UK in 2024: That the British public will get to have their own say on digital inequality and a whole host of other issues. Because, in 2024, Parliament will be dissolved in advance of an election.