On a recent trip home from an event in Denmark I had a frustrating encounter with “the system”. I was supposed to fly from Copenhagen to Frankfurt to then catch a flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco, however the plane that was supposed to take me on the first leg of the journey was one hour late.
Because that first flight departed late I got into Frankfurt later than expected and I had to book it to my connecting flight. I ran as fast as I could through the airport and I made it to my gate and was relieved to see the plane had not left yet. When I got up to the desk where the airline representative was standing I told her I was there for the flight and gave her my ticket but I was told that I would not be able to get on the flight because the door had been closed.
I could literally see the plane outside, the jet bridge was still connected, it wasn’t even supposed to depart for another 10 minutes, but I was told by the rep, “I’m sorry, the system won’t let me do it”. How many other times have we been in situations where “the system” doesn’t let us do something. How many times has “the system” not allowed you to make a bank transfer, use a discount code or speak to a human.
There was a time, before there was so much emphasis on technology, where we had human to human interactions. During that time when one of these situations came up we were shown compassion, understanding and empathy. We were told by a human, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it” or “We can make an exception” or “Don’t stress about it, we’ve got it covered”.
You don’t see this so much anymore because “the system” controls everything. But we humans created technology, shouldn’t we be able to override the system? I worry that we are going to get to a point where we’re going to design the humanity out of all of our experiences. I don’t want to live in a world where all of our experiences are controlled by “the system”, do you?
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