The New and the Old Convenience of Everyday Life

We live in a world that is vastly more convenient than in the past. Official procedures which once took us hours now take minutes. An example in the UK is the process for updating car tax. This used to begin with a letter from the DVLA (the licensing authority) notifying you of the date by which you needed to pay the tax. You would indicate on the form whether you wished to pay for a year or six months and head off to a post office authorised to deal with car tax. The completed form had to be accompanied by an up-to-date MOT roadworthiness test certificate and an insurance certificate for the car. Payment would be in cash or by cheque. These documents would be scrutinised by the post office clerk, who would return the MOT and insurance documents together with a small road tax disk, which had to be placed inside the car windscreen. This showed the expiry date of the road tax and proved to the police that the car was taxed, insured and roadworthy. Not all post offices were authorised to process car tax. For some years, we had to travel to the next village to tax our vehicle.  

Taxing my car is now much easier. The DVLA emails notification of liability for tax. Vehicle insurance and the results of MOT tests are recorded on national computer databases linked to the road tax database. There is therefore no need to produce documentary evidence. Since this information is all online (and available to the public), tax disks are redundant and were abolished in 2014. Instead, police cars have devices that read the number plates of cars on the road, to check whether they meet the legal requirements. All payment are by instantaneous bank transfer, so there is no need to visit the post office at all. In any case, cheques are all but redundant. Most bills are now paid either directly from your bank account by direct debit or standing order, or by bank transfer. 

Cash too is becoming obsolete. In the past, cash was essential for purchasing smaller items. But it was a chore to get your cash out of your bank account. You had to visit your bank and sign a cheque to yourself. Banks did not make this an easy task - they were usually closed at weekends and even at lunchtimes. I remember when I failed to get to the bank before its early closing on Christmas Eve and had to face the long holiday without any cash. Now of course, cash is easily available by using your debit card in cash machines, even in foreign countries. But even more convenient is payment by contactless credit and debit cards, which are now used for three-quarters of all transactions in the UK. 

These examples show how technology drives social change. This new convenience of everyday life is a consequence of computers, the Internet, the credit card and high-speed electronic transmission. This has replaced an earlier form of convenience, based on the petrol engine, the refrigerator and the telephone. The old convenience involved travel by car to out-of-town supermarkets and shopping centres, as well as drive-in restaurants and even drive-in banks. People could park near giant stores to stock up their large fridges with a month’s supply of food. This pattern of life sustained, particularly in North America, very low-density suburbs where there is little practical alternative to using a car. Footpaths are irregular and services too dispersed to make walking to shops or other services practicable. This old form of convenience took the person to the service by car. The modern form instead takes the service directly to the person in their home. 

Home delivery is not new. When I was a child, the milk, soft drinks, bread and coal were all delivered directly to the house. The Birmingham area even had an excellent local brewery (Davenports) which delivered ‘beer at home’. But home delivery is now used for all food and almost any other purchase, large or small, all of which can be delivered directly to the doorstep at minimal transport cost. My wife buys almost all our groceries online, carefully checking through product reviews, offers and discounts. I visit the village shop (which is within walking distance) for a top-up. I have not been in a bank for a long time, although I have occasionally spoken to banking staff online. I still travel for the podiatrist and my eye tests, although both could be arranged on a domiciliary basis. I am retired, but many younger people I know work some days/week from home, attending workplace meetings online.

The new convenience is changing our towns and cities much as the old convenience did. Supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres will decline and gradually be replaced by distribution centres and smaller convenience shops suitable for daily purchases by local residents. The large car parks around shopping centres will be used more profitably for new housing. Many banks have already closed, leaving several towns with none. The solution developed by the Government is a ‘hub’, shared by a post office and several banks, each operating one day/week. Shops in high streets will continue to close and be converted into housing. The result will be more densely-populated urban centres where key services are within walking distance. 

These changes are unsettling for many people. The closure of shops in town centres have make some places look bleak and neglected. This is unpopular - people choose not to shop in town centres, but dislike the consequences of their actions. Some people struggle with a world dependent on using computers and the Internet, and find themselves stranded in suburbs and villages and unable to get to increasingly distant local services. People are disoriented when they discover that what they took to be the modern world - of cars, motorways, drive-ins and supermarkets - is now becoming a thing of the past. 

The failed magic of politics

Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I went canvassing for the Labour Party. This was for the General Election of 1966, and was in a part of my local constituency that had some Labour voters, and which consisted mainly of semi-detached houses and council estates. I called at one house and gave my usual little speech to the owner, an old woman. “I’m not voting Labour”, she said. “That Mr Wilson (the Labour Prime Minister at the time) has been in power for 18 months and he’s not done anything about the drive at the side of my house”. The drive was indeed pot-holed and unkempt. Had I been more politically astute, I would have replied by saying “Mr Wilson has a very busy job, but I can get in touch about the drive with the local council, and they may be able to help”. At the time, I put her comments down to a lack of knowledge about the functions of different levels of government. But looking back, I see it as part of something more fundamental - a belief that political leaders have magical powers, that they can change everything all at once. The lack of change, even to minor matters such as an unkempt drive in Solihull, must therefore be evidence that they have chosen to malevolently withdraw that power. 

Ignorance of how governments operate is widespread, then as now. This became evident to me when I became a social worker a few years later. Many of the people who most depended on public services, for housing, income and basic public safety, had little idea of how these services operated and how they could best influence them. This was compounded by poor literacy, so that official letters (this was well before the Internet) were left unread. I remember visiting people about to be evicted from their council house for non-payment of rent to find the warning letters from the council stacked unopened on the mantelpiece. For such powerless people, the route to survival was gaining the ear of someone they saw as powerful. They would approach social workers like myself because we were seen as  possible intermediaries with the elusive people of power. We would do our best to explain official communications and would contact agencies on their behalf. Our role was analogous to that of the priest or saint who could act as an intermediary to God.

There is, however, no need of a god when we have television. Television is a magic window on a shining world of plenty, inhabited by the beautiful and the powerful. People on television (or now the Internet), whatever their shortcomings in real life, are worshipped by millions of acolytes. Indeed, their shortcomings seem to make them more worthy of worship, almost as if they take the sins of the world on their shoulders. Politicians who can transfer this celebrity magic to politics (like Donald Trump) become popular with the powerless irrespective of the policies they espouse. Other, less fortunate, politicians can only mimic this celebrity identity. Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage were successful at gathering some such magic, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer much less so. 

Politicians blessed with celebrity magic are assumed by their worshippers to be all-powerful and capable of correcting all ills. But the gods always fail. Society can not be wished into perfection, resources can not be generated out of nowhere, complex problems can not be solved overnight. Politicians themselves in their autobiographies complain of the immense difficulties of achieving their aims, while those who do make significant changes, like Thatcher and Johnson, often make catastrophic errors. The response to failure among the supporters of celebrity political leaders is severe rejection. This has become the fate of Blair and Johnson, but not of the less charismatic prime ministers like Major, Brown or May whose worth is often appreciated more after they leave office. 

The science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke proposed that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Our ever-more complex world, with multiple sources of powers, innumerable interacting agencies bound by complex rules is already too advanced to be comprehensible to its citizens and even to its supposed rulers. We plunge headlong into darkness.