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It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology. Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology. Making it a REQUIREMENT to do anything is absolutely not something we should be promoting. To add on to this, in both of your examples, none of those two things were required. You could get a friend to call with you, or go to the place to set up an appointment. Literacy is something we already recognize as extremely important and we absolutely do have accomodations provided for people who are illiterate.
Asking people to "be responsible for their actions or lack of them" when you talk about disability is just blatantly incorrect. Remember, we're all just temporarily abled. Some day you will grow old and have the inability to interact with modern technology. I bet then you will be very upset if everything started requiring it.
Why should I go out of my way because someone made a choice to inconvenience themselves?
This is just as bad as all of the bans on alcohol sales on Sunday because of religion.
Why should I go out of my way because someone decided that I now must own a smartphone (often iPhone or Google Play required) to do things that we all used to be able to do before without one?
This is just as bad as adding unjustified bureaucratic and procedural requirements to actions that used to be able to be done freely and without hindrance.
You don't. You are free to make any life choices you want and suffer the consequences of your life choices as long as they don't affect me.
Is it because you are a business and I'm a mere citizen?
I'm not "imposing" anything. We are both making choices that fit our own priorities.
> Why can you make the choice to require an app to pay for your parking lot depriving me from the ability to pay in cash —affecting my positive freedom of movement—, while I however must calibrate my life choices so they "don't affect" you?
We are both making choices. I am choosing not to do business with you on the terms that you find acceptable and you are choosing not to do business with me. Should I also accept pesos in the US because you don't want to exchange your pesos for dollars?
...or I will simply use the power of the state to defend my ability to live a normal life without needing a smartphone, as I live in a country where the people have chosen that consumer protection can be imposed on businesses by Law.
Do you also complain that there isn’t a number that you can call to get an Uber ride and you have to have a cell phone?
Or that you can’t call Amazon to place an order like you could when they first came online in the 90s when people were afraid to pay over the web?
If either company misses out on few Luddites on HN wearing tin foil hats, their business will go on fine.
Have you ever thought that you might just not have been able to comprehend that argument?
You said “consequences for me but not for thee”. We both “suffer” from the consequences of our actions. I lose business from people who don’t want to use a phone and you lose the chance to get a good or service you want
What I meant is that the majority of people don’t have a disability that would prevent them from using technology. The ones who do, should and do get assistance
> Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology
If your religion or ideology is to live in an ancient world, by all means do. Just don’t come to the 21st century and complain that you cannot enjoy the modern society
For all the hate the web and browsers get here, at least that's an open platform that you can run on more or less $any system of your choice, or even re-implement from scratch (which, while still a large project, is quite as hard as sometimes made out to be).
we should be empowering people to be independent, and that is even more important for people with disabilities.
> It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology
Actually, yeah, this is a good point. Ever watched somebody with a nerve issue try to use a touchscreen? Their hand shaking all over the place? You're lucky if they can do it without somehow texting gibberish to random contacts.
They are responsible for their actions, same as the people implementing these ill-informed changes are responsible for theirs.
What you miss, other than people who simply don't know, is that there is a whole universe of people for whom these solutions do not work and who are not accounted for. Accessibility is a gigantic problem in app-only spaces. Plus people who temporarily do not have a device due to loss or lack of money or simply a dead battery.
There was another article posted recently that humans are, by and large, "temporarily abled." We are born not being able to care for ourselves, we go through various stages of being or not being able to do so, and most of us die being unable to care for ourselves. Our relationship with technology is the same way.
For everywhere, but especially for sole-source things like government, transport, large public venues, and so on, accessibility must be paramount and that absolutely includes both people who cannot hear or see through people who do not have the latest technology either by choice or necessity.
As an example, there is is 75 year old Doreen ho had never touched a compupter before (start by explaining that there is no standard place to find an on-off-switch and what one may look like. She had never heard of Google. She is an entirely charming, intellifent lady with very poor eyesight, slightly dodgy literacy and no keyboard skills.
I really recommend volunteeriung for something similar.
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
Likewise, there is no mental or physical disability preventing me from understanding the fundamental maths behind quantum mechanics or exactly how Qbits work. ... but I don't.
???
Blindness? Loss of limbs? Combined with poor/non-existent accessibility implementations on the digital replacements of the meatspace technologies.
Disabilities aside, what about just a plain old dead battery or a misplaced phone? I can’t look at your restaurant’s menu if my phone is dead? I can’t park my car if I left my phone at home?
Judging by the amount of insufferable "Got it! Got it! Got it!" modals, pop ups and other bullshit in "modern" technology, the apps themselves are the disability - wasting time and getting in the way of doing the thing the user is actually trying to accomplish.
This is not technology enabling new features — it is technology being used to excuse a regression of features.
The anxiety and distraction produced by smart phones is well-documented, as is the invasion of privacy and manipulation.
What makes you so sure you’ve got it right? Why not allow people who choose not to have phones to pay in cash? Why do you feel their lives should be difficult?
Why do you want to punish them?
> What makes you so sure you’ve got it right? Why not allow people who choose not to have phones to pay in cash
Because accepting cash has its own risks -- employee theft, getting robbed, etc.
> invasion of privacy
Both Android and more so iOS have plenty of permissions to keep apps from getting information from you.
And there's nothing you can do to prevent your ISP, nor your OS from tracking you.
Sorry to ask, but are you even informed on this subject?
>Because accepting cash has its own risks -- employee theft, getting robbed, etc.
Oh, so you think people can't take responsibility for that choice?
Then use your phone as a wifi only device and don't buy a phone with an operating system created by an adTech company.
> Oh, so you think people can't take responsibility for that choice?
They are taking responsibility for their own safety by choosing not to accept cash. But the consequences of being killed because you are carrying cash is a lot greater than worrying about the man tracking you....
You're not Batman's parents, you're just a regular person, no one cares what you have in your pockets. It's honestly baffling to me that someone could believe this is a valid assessment of real-life risk.
https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/robbery-convenience-stores...
https://www.statesboroherald.com/local/robbers-target-conven...
https://rangerguard.net/blogpost/why-are-convenience-stores-...
I am concluding that you are, indeed, severely uninformed on the subject matter. I would recommend reading up on the baseband system of mobile phones as a starting point.
It's very much a "yes, and" situation here. Offering physical resources is not mutually exclusive with providing digital means to access those things, too.
Please try to engage in the conversation in good faith.
Noise pollution and light pollution are both issues that localities have legislated against, yes.
Checking the weather? Comfortable. Using modern phones and apps in a way that doesn't compromise one's privacy is very, very uncomfortable. I know because I do it on a regular basis.
It's costly and time consuming. Paying cash and not providing tons of PII would be much faster, easier, and more comfortable, and indeed that's what I choose to do in all cases where it is a possibility.
That was never an issue with iOS. For some reason I am not surprised that an operating system created by an adTech company doesn't care about your privacy,
> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
Such ss?
I'm pretty sure it was an issue before iOS 6.
>> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
> Such ss?
Well, sandbox escapes have already been talked about. But, I also believe accelerometer data isn't gated. Any app can talk to the Internet. But, I don't have a modern iPhone to corroborate that info.
> Well, sandbox escapes have already been talked about.
Citation? And I'm not referring to targeted state actions.
> I also believe accelerometer data isn't gated.
Turn on rotation lock.
> Any app can talk to the Internet
You can disable cellular data access on a per app basis. I wish you could turn off wifi access on a per app basis.
Since the first release of the iPhone? I find that hard to believe since the release notes for iOS 6 specifically called out their fine-grained permissions improvements. There was clearly some wholesale bundling before that.
> Citation? And I'm not referring to targeted state actions.
It was very easy to find this article: https://medium.com/ssd-secure-disclosure/ios-vulnerabilities...
There has never been a version of iOS that forced you to accept all permissions before you could download it. I'm not even sure that would be possible. The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
I didn't say that. I said they had access without any sort of permission mechanism. The bundling I was referring to was both the fine-grained access, and permissions that weren't gated.
> The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
The app can advertise to the OS which capabilities it will use and then the OS can deny the app access to anything it hasn't requested or it has but the user has not allowed.
> Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
That is not what that permissions tightening was like: https://www.cultofmac.com/173128/new-ios-6-privacy-settings-...
> The iOS6 beta brings much finer-grained controls to the privacy settings, letting you specify just what services any app will have access to.
There weren't limitations on calendar, contact, reminder and photo gallery access.
Besides certain specialized entitlements, that's not how iOS apps have ever worked.
> That is not what that permissions tightening was like
We are talking about three different things.
1. With Android, you use to have to give an app all of the permissions it requested on first launch or not install it. That has never been the case on iOS.
2. Apple has put more things behind permissions as time goes on - what you are referring to.
3. Tightening permissions are like what I was referring to such as only allowing an app to have access to certain photos or contacts and adding GPS permissions to only allow an app to use GPS when the app is in the foreground.
Network access. Accelerometer access (which, remember, can be used as a rudimentary microphone among other things).
You can disable cellular access on a per app basis. Yes not being able to turn off access for wifi on a per app basis is a gap.
> Accelerometer access
An app can't access accelerometer data in the background on iOS.
Smartphones are tracking devices as well. There are really good arguments to be made that I should reasonably opt out from an un-auditable, expensive hyper-tracker with a monthly subscription cost.