<story><title>Does cashless society discriminate against the poor and elderly? (2019)</title><url>https://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/w231/2019/10/14/does-cashless-society-discriminate-against-the-poor-and-elderly/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>azalemeth</author><text>Landlines were state-of-the-art tech more than a century ago; depending on when you define its invention it came at some point between 1844 and 1877 [1] and it was widespread by the second world war. There was a huge portion of the last century in which &amp;quot;just&amp;quot; having a landline was a relatively constant, relatively well defined utility and (from the consumer&amp;#x27;s point of view) the technology was mature and did not change much between arguably 1950 and about 1990. The rotary dial pulse dialling system was patented in 1891; the telephone I grew up using (in the 1980s) used essentially the same technology and pulse dialling gradually replaced it over the course of several decades. Most of the innovation took place on the side of the exchange, and the average telephone user probably noticed little other than changes in billing and a slowly decreasing frequency of talking to an operator.&lt;p&gt;Cellphones are completely different. My &amp;quot;daily driver&amp;quot; smartphone, bought in 2017 for ~1&amp;#x2F;4 of my monthly salary, is obsolete and I have rooted it in order to continue to install security updates. This &lt;i&gt;has&lt;/i&gt; locked me out of my Danish bank account.&lt;p&gt;My mum&amp;#x27;s 1980s PSTN phone still works, even when the mains electricity is out, no technology change required.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_the_telephone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_the_telephone&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pulse_dialing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pulse_dialing&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because when they were young a &amp;#x27;normal land line&amp;#x27; was the state of the art tech. Why were they fine using state of the art tech then? I guess older people at the time found it confusing and the people complaining to you probably thought they should get with the times.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same stuff just in a cycle.</text></item><item><author>krolden</author><text>Ive been doing some IT work at a cell phone store in a very low income area. There is a large number of people coming in to buy new phones or get their old ones repaired and many of them (especially the older ones) HATE that they need to have a smartphone. I hear at least one person a day complain about how they cant just have a normal land line anymore and need to have a smartphone to participate in society.&lt;p&gt;Also they REALLY dont like hearing about how the phone they have now is obsolete and theres no way to get parts for it, or its just too far gone and they&amp;#x27;ll need to buy a new phone. I feel for all of these people as I totally agree with them.</text></item><item><author>trylfthsk</author><text>I think there almost needs to be a &amp;quot;Reacher Law&amp;quot;, in that there should be minimal friction to participating in society aside from maybe cash and an ID. 
I definitely find a default assumption of having a smartphone that&amp;#x27;s creeping in everywhere (android &amp;#x2F; iOS compatible &amp;amp; has an active data plan) to be increasingly cloying.&lt;p&gt;Currently, all I can do is politely decline and insist that I neither have the Play nor Apple store; I still find it uncomfortable even giving away my phone number.
I couldn&amp;#x27;t even get into my gym the other day, since they&amp;#x27;d transitioned to app sign-in only (phasing out barcode tags); I&amp;#x27;m forced to beg the attendant to look me up by phone number &lt;i&gt;every time&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;*EDIT: I hope ranting about smartphones in a cashless-ness thread isn&amp;#x27;t too off topic</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Rediscover</author><text>&amp;gt; even when the mains electricity is out&lt;p&gt;My ex (and still one of my best friends!) was (is?) a first responder for the Pacific North-West (think oil-spills on mountains and other ecological problems).  She was required to have a land-line.  It was great that it would forward to a mobile, and lacking that, dump back to a battery-backed-up voice mail unit on-premises (possibly more).&lt;p&gt;OT:  Her position seemed unique to me -- working for &amp;lt;whatever&amp;gt; $company, she would get alerted&amp;#x2F;activated for things in the Canada AND the U.S.  And they would do the thing of &amp;quot;Where are You? ....... There&amp;#x27;s a heliport at X - we&amp;#x27;ll have a &amp;#x27;copter there in 15 minutes&amp;quot; and then I get to send her away clutch when I got home.</text></comment>
<story><title>Does cashless society discriminate against the poor and elderly? (2019)</title><url>https://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/w231/2019/10/14/does-cashless-society-discriminate-against-the-poor-and-elderly/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>azalemeth</author><text>Landlines were state-of-the-art tech more than a century ago; depending on when you define its invention it came at some point between 1844 and 1877 [1] and it was widespread by the second world war. There was a huge portion of the last century in which &amp;quot;just&amp;quot; having a landline was a relatively constant, relatively well defined utility and (from the consumer&amp;#x27;s point of view) the technology was mature and did not change much between arguably 1950 and about 1990. The rotary dial pulse dialling system was patented in 1891; the telephone I grew up using (in the 1980s) used essentially the same technology and pulse dialling gradually replaced it over the course of several decades. Most of the innovation took place on the side of the exchange, and the average telephone user probably noticed little other than changes in billing and a slowly decreasing frequency of talking to an operator.&lt;p&gt;Cellphones are completely different. My &amp;quot;daily driver&amp;quot; smartphone, bought in 2017 for ~1&amp;#x2F;4 of my monthly salary, is obsolete and I have rooted it in order to continue to install security updates. This &lt;i&gt;has&lt;/i&gt; locked me out of my Danish bank account.&lt;p&gt;My mum&amp;#x27;s 1980s PSTN phone still works, even when the mains electricity is out, no technology change required.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_the_telephone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_the_telephone&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pulse_dialing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pulse_dialing&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because when they were young a &amp;#x27;normal land line&amp;#x27; was the state of the art tech. Why were they fine using state of the art tech then? I guess older people at the time found it confusing and the people complaining to you probably thought they should get with the times.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same stuff just in a cycle.</text></item><item><author>krolden</author><text>Ive been doing some IT work at a cell phone store in a very low income area. There is a large number of people coming in to buy new phones or get their old ones repaired and many of them (especially the older ones) HATE that they need to have a smartphone. I hear at least one person a day complain about how they cant just have a normal land line anymore and need to have a smartphone to participate in society.&lt;p&gt;Also they REALLY dont like hearing about how the phone they have now is obsolete and theres no way to get parts for it, or its just too far gone and they&amp;#x27;ll need to buy a new phone. I feel for all of these people as I totally agree with them.</text></item><item><author>trylfthsk</author><text>I think there almost needs to be a &amp;quot;Reacher Law&amp;quot;, in that there should be minimal friction to participating in society aside from maybe cash and an ID. 
I definitely find a default assumption of having a smartphone that&amp;#x27;s creeping in everywhere (android &amp;#x2F; iOS compatible &amp;amp; has an active data plan) to be increasingly cloying.&lt;p&gt;Currently, all I can do is politely decline and insist that I neither have the Play nor Apple store; I still find it uncomfortable even giving away my phone number.
I couldn&amp;#x27;t even get into my gym the other day, since they&amp;#x27;d transitioned to app sign-in only (phasing out barcode tags); I&amp;#x27;m forced to beg the attendant to look me up by phone number &lt;i&gt;every time&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;*EDIT: I hope ranting about smartphones in a cashless-ness thread isn&amp;#x27;t too off topic</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>midasuni</author><text>They might have been state of the art, but they weren’t ubiquitous&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;data&amp;#x2F;tables&amp;#x2F;time-series&amp;#x2F;dec&amp;#x2F;coh-phone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;data&amp;#x2F;tables&amp;#x2F;time-series&amp;#x2F;dec&amp;#x2F;coh-phone...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;1 in 20 households lacked a phone in 1990, 1 in 5 in 1960, and those number his regional variations.</text></comment>