A surprise of mass travel, if like Rip Van Winkle you’ve been sleeping for years, is the extent of mechanization. Jobs once held by humans are increasingly performed by machines.
A machine answers questions about destinations and timetables; tickets us and assigns our seats; directs us to the airport, carries us there and might have driven itself if the most conspicuous manufacturer of such vehicles didn’t rub me wrong. A machine informs our machine where to park and how to pay for the privilege (a lot); nudges us into elevators and through corridors to enter the terminal, where another machine checks us in and stows our luggage for an impressive fee. All financial arrangements are instantly transacted by machines interacting with each other: another few years and cash will recall a singer only. Machines point us to our gate. Since we’re early – officially enrolled in our anti-anxiety decade – let’s “grab a bite to eat” from one of the brand-name purveyors in the “food court.” (Oh to be a justice of the food court!)
At this newbie to the chain-restaurant scrum, where Starbucks and McDonald’s reign supreme, with its sham Italian name and perky signage (design @ visual machine), we’re assured a gourmet experience if we seat ourselves (no live humans yet), aim our smartphones at a QR code, order from the online menu, and pay, supplementing costs and tax with a suggested tip of eighteen, twenty-five, or (as I recall) thirty percent. (A tip for what?) Still no humans but wait! – a server will be with us shortly – who addresses us as “Young lady” and “Young man” in a joke as stale as our “authentic” garlic bread. We down as much glop as we can stomach (for they’ve stopped serving meals on shorter flights) and bid adieu to … well, nobody. Arriving at the gate, we listen for our boarding group’s summons – but don’t loiter near the entrance: such anxious travelers ground-crews have nicknamed “gate lice”. Our group called – finally! – by a staticky PA system, we debouch in a chute from terminal to jet, where we’re greeted with “Welcome aboard” by (live) flight attendants with grins so stretched they might snap. We buckle in – hurray! – to be diverted by a hundred machine-made movies – downloaded through our smartphone – or sleep if we (ever-so-humanly) prefer. Intermittently, throughout this process, machines invite us to rate our satisfaction. Our opinion is important to these surveyors, we’re assured.
If the foregoing paragraphs feel clunky and laborious, so does the experience they describe. Machines view humans as irritants, necessary to fund the invention and maintenance of superior machines, but beyond that so erratic, entitled, whiney! We keep ordering what isn’t on the menu – and as for our feelings and failings (for machines, feelings are failings)…
Dissed, I sulk. “Are you OK?” Jane asks humanly. And of course I say yes, not wanting to be a sad-sack, sourpuss, or prima donna – this is a pleasure trip, after all – and to discourse just now about alienation or spiritual desiccation would be prissy elitism at its most obnoxious. Who do I think I am! And yes, these machines, contrived by humans, are wondrous – if only they didn’t shrink me to a datapoint.
Humans like to think we matter – as individuals. Dog-pal Henry considers this ludicrous, but so we are. Our spirits lift when acknowledged as persons, not just problems to be solved. Machines, the quintessence of rationality, agree with Henry – “get over it,” they inaudibly sigh behind their programmed affability.
To their rule I promise compliance – if I can. But, oh, am I glad to be home.