Back To The Stone Age
“Your transaction has not been processed. Your card has been retained.”
With those few words, the ATM at the Co-Op cursed my existence this week. No, there’s nothing wrong with the account: the Beast In The Machine simply decided it was my turn to be ridiculed. Chomp, chomp, chomp – no more money.
“Hah!” said I, mockingly. “I have another account and another card. I laugh at your feeble attempt to make my life as difficult as finding a watchable television series.”
And with that, I went for a cashback. One day turned into another and all was well. But the Beast had another trick up its mechanical sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” said the cashier. “We can’t do cashbacks today.”
Something died inside me. The Beast lay in wait. I could hear its motor chuckling as I reluctantly lined up to ask it for some money. The two people in front of me seemed happy enough, the cheery sound of £10 notes being distributed lifting their spirits.
Soon, it was my turn. I approached and inserted my card. I entered my PIN. I chose the amount I wanted.
“Your transaction has not been processed. Your card has been retained.”
No easy online money transfers could save me now. I had to do it. I had to brave The Real World and find an old-fashioned bank. And so I went into town, sweating in the heat and struggling with back pain, hoping that the bizarre concept of “opening hours” wouldn’t make the trip pointless.
It’s like stepping into another world – or back through time. Having to actually talk to people and ask them for money, instead of just typing it into a box on a screen. And the worst thing? They still use paper. Oh, my goodness – how very 1990s! I half expected to see a wooly mammoth queue up behind me to pay in his wages.
Ug. Make fire. Hunt food. Withdraw cash.
Steven and I only take BACS transfer for debate ringside seating Spike, so you can put your folding Sov’s back in your pocket
A disconcerting tale that fuels my increasing propensity for deep sighs and hermit-esque muttering. Not the absence of a compliant Beast, rather, the illusory nature of a technological comfort blanket.
I’m not generally a hand-wringing “end-is-nigh” Chicken Little sort, more what you might call an aspiring initiate in the arcane tradition of omen and portent. I’m quite taken with the implications of Labour’s resident crystal ball gazer, Dr James Bellini, who in recent years has downsized his ’20 years into the future’ prophecy model, to a fifteen-year maximum range. In view of a post-war cross-party political legacies unable or unwilling to commit to much beyond a term of office, it’s quite intriguing Labour concerns itself with the good doctor’s wisdom. He asserts we’re set for another thirteen years or so of technology-driven progress in society and the workplace but our Jimmy refuses to speculate on what awaits us at the edge of his predictions. My feeling is there’s sufficient clues when taking into account the increasing volatility of our host planet; events that so many other people’s around the fragile globe are exposed to practically on a daily basis, whereas we in our cushioned sanitised First World existence remain smugly secure with a misplaced sense of immunity. Yet for all that, look what happens when it snows in the UK. Norwegians seem to manage fine.
I’ve long espoused the importance of a manual and local Plan B. This has been especially aimed at those reliant upon online ventures for income. My ears pricked up a few years ago, inner radar on DefCon 3 at the throwaway remark from a comms sector commentator that it only needs three satellites out of position and we have no internet. I have no way of verifying this, it might be four or it could be purely a matter of spherical objects one associates with male anatomy period. However, history is littered with the debris of advanced civilisations so I’m inclined to tread warily when vouchsafing the notion of ever-onward in the name of progress. I suspect it’s the communities still in envious possession of corner shops, working farms, post office blue rinses, goods for services exchange mechanisms and a healthy respect for Mother Nature, that would least affected by the absence of ATM’s, online banking and the loss of an ecommerce website business.
So Spike, your experience raises a question about the vulnerability of all those deriving a meagre living or fatcat bonuses from dependency on a virtual world. Do each of us have a boot-up out of the box cash model next to the banknotes under the mattress to supplement or wholly replace the online revenues? Enough to afford a woolly mammoth overcoat from a catalog company? It is woolly isn’t it? Not wooly? It is catalogue isn’t it, unless the American cousin version was for search term purposes? Uh-oh, I think I just stepped in something, while leading with my chin…cover……incoming…..