I went to see a movie, and instead I saw the future

From the OP: "This is the future, I’m afraid. A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong. Because computers don’t make mistakes. An automated future where no one actually knows how things work. A future where people are so far removed from the process that they stand around powerless, unable to take the reigns. A future where people don’t remember how to help one another in person. A future where corporations are so obsessed with efficiency, that it doesn’t make sense to staff a theater with technical help because things only go wrong sometimes. A future with a friendlier past."

This reads eerily like the world depicted by the classic film, "Brazil," by Terry Gillian -- a world run by impersonal machines and processes beyond the control of most human beings. The plot starts with a fly getting jammed in a printer, creating a typographical error, which results in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of an innocent man; and that's just the beginning. People in this world are powerless, unable to take the reigns, unable to help other human beings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)

Let's hope humanity finds a way to build a different kind of future.

I think this view could be abstracted as "tech is helping automate customer service into oblivion."

I had a very similar experience this past week:

I wanted a new dryer for the apartment. The goal was to have the installation process be as hands-off as possible, so I googled, ordered online from Home Depot, and signed up for their "free installation" service. Click click click done.

Every part of the process stunk. The delivery company rescheduled (they didn't care - no connection to Home Depot itself), the guys who showed up came up with some excuse as to why they couldn't actually do the installation, and not only did they not care when I told them to cancel the delivery, they seemed happy that they didn't have to do the work ("no problem! we're outta here!").

Home Depot customer service didn't care when I asked for a refund. Nobody cared they lost a sale over something trivial and solvable. Nobody wanted to solve the issue (it would be more work to do that), nobody had a stake in the game, everyone got paid regardless. No humanity, just automatons dutifully processing the commands given to them.

In the end? Ordered from the local appliance shop that's been in business for 100+ years. Single phone call. They cared. Perfect process, no Internet (or, frankly, any tech other than an email confirmation) required.

My opinion is exactly the reverse. This is not the future. This is a story about a company whose time is highly limited.

I have a company - not a start-up, just a regular ol business- - that will do just under 7 figures of revenue in this, our very first year. 100% bootstrapped from savings.

In an industry which normally requires a high level of trust (think $4000+ upfront spend), we've signed up dozens of customers with ZERO reviews or prior reputation.

How?

We treat other people like humans - we talk to them like they're adults, treat them like they're adults, and have created a very special product that meets their needs as human beings.

Everything is designed from the ground up to be HUMAN FIRST, systems, policies and software be damned.

As long as human beings are the ones spending the money, companies like mine will own the future.

What did you expect?

This isn't the future - this is how it's been for decade(s) and it's just you only notice it when it "goes wrong" (for whatever reason)

When your cinema ran film, there needed to be somebody who could "deal with film"... I believe there used to be a profession called "A Projectionist"

Pretty much from the moment films were digitally distributed, the multiplex became a giant automated jukebox - only staff there are to sell you food and to clean up the mess you left from your food.

First time I hit this (easily over a decade ago) was when somebody had left the polarizing filter on the projector lens and we were trying to watch a 2D film. Eventually we got somebody to "take the filter off" and we could actually see the film properly - but then restarting the film descended into a cluster-fuck of trying to convince the DRM system that they weren't trying to show a bootleg showing and how even if they did restart, it was going to through the centrally-planned multiplex schedule into chaos.

This has been true since platter systems took over in the 80s and 90s.

Back in that era, I saw so many movies that had completely broken projection and the staff had no idea what to do. Like now, it was so automated that all they knew was how to click the button to start the movie. Today's cinema systems are so much more reliable in comparison.

So maybe it's best to just acknowledge that there's a lost art here: film projection. The best looking 35mm film projection I ever saw in a regular theater was "The Man Who Wasn't There" at the Catlow. That theater had a projectionist who had worked there since WWII[1].

But, thanks to technology like digital projectors with autofocus, almost every movie I see today has better projection than that standout experience. It looks beautiful even weeks after release, since there's no physical film that gets scratched, starts to weave, etc.

[1] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2003-08-31-030831...

At first this article seemed like some sort of new "interactive movie" thing, but I was mildly disappointed in the end to read that it was actually just about a technical problem at the movie theater. (don't get me wrong, it's a good article)

>"This is the future, I’m afraid. A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong. Because computers don’t make mistakes . . . A future where corporations are so obsessed with efficiency, that it doesn’t make sense to staff a theater with technical help because things only go wrong sometimes. A future with a friendlier past."

It doesn't make sense for a theater to have a high-paid techie on staff to handle the small percentage of the time some major technical glitch happens. Instead of the theater hiring technical staff, they can now put that money towards a better overall movie-going experience (those times when glitches don't happen anyways).

I guess I just don't agree with the author of the article that this is a bad thing.

It's nuts how similar this story is to the numerous HN comments I've read about people running into trouble with their Google accounts.

Most of us in tech have not only seen this future, we have coded and design it. Systems with little or no human interaction so when things go terribly wrong, there is no course of action that people can take to solve their problems. It's probably going to get worse with mediocre AI working on huge data sets, "don't blame our product issues on us, it was the AI that caused it... and we have no idea what the hell is was thinking.".

"A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong. Because computers don’t make mistakes. An automated future where no one actually knows how things work."

Sounds like a good plot line for a movie...

Digital and analog movies fail in different ways, but when a movie exhibited on film fails, normally there's not much the theater staff can do about it in time to keep on schedule anyway. I really don't see what most of this story has to do with "the future" -- going to the movies 15 years ago on a gift certificate when there's a projector problem probably has about the same outcome.

Will consumers reward businesses that correct for this?

Alamo Drafthouse has always seemed humanity-first to me from movie programming, to community-based events, to viewing experience. Their patrons seem to appreciate it.

If you're going all in on automation, at least try and do it well. In this case I don't see any technical reason why you couldn't have automated monitoring of the screenings, automated raising of alerts if there are issues, remote debugging from some central service desk, centrally controlled announcements to keep customers informed, etc.

And if you're not going the automation route, make personal service a differentiator. In the UK we have the Everyman Cinemas doing this for example, offering sofas with tables, a table service for food and drink, knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff, etc.

Reminds me of yesterday trying to collect a hire car in central Stockholm from a Hertz "intelligent locker":

1. Texted PIN to get into garage didn't work. After 5 minutes just tailed someone else through the door.

2. Locker rejected non-Euro drivers license. Call to contact centre overcame it.

3. "Prefilled" customer details were all wrong and didn't match confirmation email. So 10 minutes to retype them.

4. Exit boom gate wouldn't open. Garage said to call hire company. Hire company said they cannot open it. 3-way call resulted in garage employee begrudgingly pressing a button to remotely open it.

Not to single out Hertz, last week we returned an Avis car to the reservation specified location at the correct time (10 pm), but a sign there stated the key drop was "permanently closed" and to deliver it 5 km away. We had an overnight train to catch so were forced to urgently do so and incur the return taxi fare.

I'm unsure how far society can keep shoving incompetent automation down peoples' throats. I understand that people generally want to save money, but I think many want high-impact experiences (like 3 kids + 2 adults + transport mode changes) to go smoothly enough they will happily a little pay more to derisk it.

My Dad was extremely good at talking to people. Too good sometimes, when it called for a short interaction it would become a longer one (still usually benefited him).

He had a saying I never liked about low wage workers who didn't understand what they were doing or have any power outside of their task:

"A system designed by geniuses, to be run by idiots"

... Might be a little harsh, but I think he was on to something. The workers in this article had no power to correct anything, they had no responsibly or opportunity to learn, the turnover is probably very high and coincides with semester starts/ends. They're allowed to be worthless when something goes wrong, maybe the author is right and some are even encouraged to be.

How many people have seen code that is written for "things only go wrong sometimes"? Yep, but when they do!

Twenty-First Century corporations either don't offer any public access at all a la FAANG, or build a wall of useless people to interact with the public, to mask the reality that they are just like FAANG.

The problem was that there existed humans to complain to. Imagine if there were no people at all. No ushers to track down. No staff. The box office an automated kiosk. Nobody to actually complain to. The only option available to submit a ticket online, where it could be properly triaged and a technical fix dispatched according to optimal scheduling. The author would have requested a refund from Fandango, and may or may not have received it, but we would have saved the time of at least five people who otherwise would have worked at a movie theatre.

I’ll take the small chance of this any day of the week so I can get $15 movie tickets. I know I will because I go to the Metreon AMC and the Century Westfield way more than I go to Alamo Drafthouse.

I have recently started using Office 365 at work, and it seems like a similar setup. Our in-house tech support are fine when stuff works, but if something’s wrong they have no idea. No word from Microsoft. Maybe if there’s a major outage, they’ll know something. A file disappears from OneDrive, there’s no help.

Overall, it’s a net positive, I think. But I feel bad for the humans in these non-jobs. Once roombas can clean movie theaters and show people how to set up Word on their phone, then it’s game over.

The very definition of an anecdote.

The cinema in my town in Ede, the Netherlands is fantastic.

Hmm, who would have thought it that 2 businesses could operate... differently?

This has nothing to do with computers or the future...

Reminds me of Foundation

I wonder how different this story would be if the “manager” wasn’t ensconced in the office? The mechanism works something like this:

* The “manager”, mostly not giving a shit.

* Employees, under no meaningful oversight, goof-off.

* Problem occurs, nobody notices. Customers can’t find staff...

It’s all downhill, from the top-down.

This isn't tomorrow. This is today. This is what I live daily when talking to others as a DevOps engineer. Everyone thinks everything just works, and doesn't under why you still need SSH access to things for debugging.

Excuse me, how can people be so concerned about this while we have a major climate crisis going on that affects 7 billion people? It blows my mind.

No, your one bad experience probably doesn't mean that everyone's experience will always be bad forever now.

I'm sure people have occasionally had bad experiences at the movies for as long as there have been movies.

this has some elements of cultural difference. in America, we want to be coddled with empty sorries and emphatic statements. the reality is seeing a movie is a transaction, and in many other countries, they don't get as excited about seriously apologising over and over.

how much extra money per ticket would you pay for those sorries in exceptional circumstances? when i was growing up, i went to a 'mom and pop' theater. people knew each other, you got to know the owner and talk to him about what he was booking.

he was priced out. most people prefer saving a few bucks per ticket, and will give up sorries to get it. that's capitalism for you, giving people what they actually want, not what they ask for it think they want. capitalism follows the money.

I've never had an experience remotely like this. It makes me wonder where the author is from that their standards of customer service are so low.

> I went to see a movie, and instead I saw the future

When I read this title I was sure the author had gone to see Idiocracy.

This is not specially the future. This is the low cost. When you pay a minimal price for a service, you have a minimal service.

Movie theaters are run by teenagers and young adults. It is no surprise that they cannot handle hiccups.

> This is the future, I’m afraid. A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong.

Many organizations have one of two perspectives on customer service:

A) It's an opportunity to ensure customer happiness and repeat customers.

B) It's a cost to be externalized to the customer as much as possible.

The organizations in group A are often like the local appliance shop nih mentions in another comment: small, with an interest in repeat business, and relying on word-of-mouth as the primary customer acquisition channel. They may be in a competitive marketplace nominally (i.e., there are big chains around) and so they know they can't compete on price, so they compete on convenience, attitude, help-when-things-go-wrong, advice, etc. Customers are often not so price-sensitive that they'll always go with the cheapest option. This used to be many businesses, but technology grants advantages to those in group B --

The organizations in group B compete on price, or exist in a local environment in which they don't really to compete for customers. Movie theaters, insurance companies, FAANGs, etc. -- they know that most customers are not really there by choice (at least anymore, perhaps they used to be) -- they're there because that's where their friends (F), the best stuff (A, A), their favorite movies (N), or the quickest results (G) are. They're there because their employer has a contract (insurance companies), they're there because it's the only theater in town, they're there because it's the strictly cheapest flight from SFO to YYZ.

For group B organizations, a dollar spent on customer service is a dollar lost; when things go wrong, it's up to the customer to resolve it, and the customer incurs basically the entire cost of this "fixing" it, even if the organization nominally issues a refund. The OP here was not reimbursed for any of the costs incurred by the theater's screw-up. When insurers deny claims spuriously and force their customers to do the leg work to show they're in the right, and the insurer doesn't reimburse the customer for the cost of time, energy, missed work, etc -- and would almost certainly laugh at an invoice for work the insurer should have done, but didn't.

After all, what's the customer going to do about it? They probably can't or don't want to switch to another vendor. If there even is an industry regulator, it's almost certainly not going to be worth it for an individual customer to even file a grievance.

> no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong

I think it's less that "no one has to think about what happens" when things go wrong, it's that the cost of things going wrong has simply been passed along to the customer.

One way to think about the extra cost of customer service for a company is as a mandated "insurance" plan for the customer when something goes wrong. The cost is spread across all customers, but the benefit only accrues to those who have something go wrong, or who want smiles -- except of course it also accrues to the customers who value the knowledge that if something goes wrong, there's an insurance policy for it.

Few people pay for insurance when they don't have to, so perhaps it's no surprise we see a trend towards group B.

typo: reins not reigns

So the author had a poor customer service experience, and blames it on "the future".

This is the sort of rant I expect from my grandpa, not the blog of a tech company.

When all of you damn people eventually move to a small town, please drive slow, turn down your damn car audio system. And finally, don't make life about money. The race doesn't need to exist. Cook at home, and don't beg New Seasons, Natural Grocers or Whole Foods to move to your new home.

Everything that happened at that movie theatre and almost everything around you in life is due to population scale.

This is what being completely out of touch and rich looks like when you didn't grow up rich.

Now imagine what thoughts go through the heads of second and third generation rich kids.

Now imagine that politicians are mostly those rich kids.

That's the present, and the future. Jason, you're part of the problem you're complaining about and you don't even know it. So it goes.