In 2013, I ended a long-haul flight at Dubai Terminal 3 and was greeted by a very long queue at passport control. So long, in fact, that it took me 4 hours to pass through. A few months later, I got myself an e-gate pass. It now takes me a few minutes at passport control when I land in Dubai, and 10-15 minutes from taxi drop-off to duty free when I fly out, thanks to the e-gate and online check-in which sends my boarding pass to my email and Apple’s Passbook.
Sure, an e-gate has been around for a while, but over the past few years, there has been a great influx of technologies that gave birth to services that are either free or a very low cost, technologies which have automated or enabled us to streamline various aspects of our routines.
Take for example, Uber. At any time, one can fire up the app with a tap, and the GPS locates you and another tap sends a driver your way. You get a notification that your cabbie has arrived. A few years ago, I had to wait out and hope that a taxi would pass through the alleyway, or walk to the main road to increase my chances (and other bystanders better not steal my cab!).
You have a service like talabat.com, which connects you to hundreds of restaurants around you, filtered by cuisines and consumer ratings. You can browse the menus, make your orders on the interface, and then have the food delivered. Zomato is another such app. Before technology made those possible, I had to look for delivery brochures and hope they were not outdated, and I only had a very limited number of delivery options; only very few places even delivered food.
And then you have services such as Google Alerts and others in its vein (like most news apps), which automatically – and constantly – monitors the internet and sends you notifications that match your interests. Technology enabled us to transition from actively searching for information, to having it delivered to us.
There is a disadvantage, however. As these technologies evolve, so does our dependency on them. We now expect things to be done faster, more efficiently, and better. Today, a queue of a few people has become a nightmare; failing to check-in online (and even choosing your own seat) will cause panic; having way too many delivery options is mind-boggling, but almost always never enough; requesting an Uber and seeing that the cabbie needs 8 minutes to arrive makes you wonder whether finding a cab yourself is faster.
The convenience that these technologies has given us often backfires when they change our expectations of how the world works. It is prevalent in younger generations who grew up with these technologies already in place; for those of us who used to do things “the old way”, we could – to a degree – manage our inconveniences when technologies fail. Younger generations, to put it in their terms, “can’t even”. Growing up in a world that has always been digital and transitioning to automation, expectations are significantly different: we always have „better things to do” than waiting. We grow impatient at the slightest delay. Technology is evolving so rapidly that we know that the fastest and best today will be obsolete in a few months. In other words, we have set our expectations to be constantly disappointed.
Technologies not only shape our lives and how we run them, but also our expectations of how the world should work, once these technologies have been introduced – and used – for some time. It’s good to embrace these technologies, but one needs to take a step back every now and then, look around, and appreciate things for what they are.
