This rigidity of computers is exactly why we must not let them control society.
Society is responsible for each and every member of it. Having 0.001% of population's lives ruined because of an error is not acceptable.
Humans may be slower and less efficient than machines (and require living wages), but humans are flexible and understand context. Replacing them with machines will only remove the useful human capabilities that we need so much in this society where most of the rules are still ad-hoc and implicit.
Imagine being assaulted by a robot policeman whose crime detection facility has malfunctioned, while you can't even complain to his robot colleague because it hasn't been programmed for malfunction of other robot policemen.
> Imagine being assaulted by a robot policeman whose crime detection facility has malfunctioned, while you can't even complain to his robot colleague because it hasn't been programmed for malfunction of other robot policemen.
To be fair, that's pretty much how it works with human cops
You can experience that every time you fill a form online. If it works, it's a joy. Saved time and energy. So much more efficient.
If something goes wrong however, there is no flexible human to fix it, give you an alternative solution, or perform a workaround. You are now in for a long and painful trip.
You can have cashless shit but don't take cash as an option for the rest of us. Another way of sayinf cashless is "tracked and logged payment transactions with regulated participation in commerce".
On a recent trip to London, I was surprised on the number of places that DO NOT take cash (some bars, major chain coffee shops). Family members explained that this was due to COVID. However if the server doesn't wear a mask, then this is a moot point.
Indeed. This is why a digital currency is only viable if you have the ability to make anonymous third party transactions. Until then, I remain a hard no. But even bitcoin doesn't truly offer that.
Even then, is your participation in that system regulated? Do you need a smartphone with government issued id as a requirement? And internet usage and access? With cash you just need the person to hand you the currency paper. Will there be physical representarion of the anonymous digital currency that can be used by anyone that posseses them without authentication?
It doesn't have to be that dramatic. Sure, abolishing cash is problematic from a civil rights perspective, but a simple thing like a payment major processor having a two-day outage would be disastrous in a cash-less society.
Many proponents of abolishing cash seem to think that one can avoid outages by simply requiring that payment processors aren't allowed to have outages. Unfortunately, outages tend to happen even when they're inconvenient. And that's just technical issues -- add the risk of cyber attacks, acts of war, or the Sun ejecting a load straight in the face of Mother Earth, and it's not a matter of _if_ there will be an outage. It's just a matter of when and how we deal with t.
Cash is a very good backup plan for such occasions.
Indeed. Or even just economic crashes. If you have cashless society, the average human cannot easily remove it from the banking system in case the gov pulls out a Greek plan.
I recently bought a roti on store credit when a major internet outage hit my city. The owner said he was out 1500-worth-of-sales for the day, recognized my friend as a regular, and wrote our names down in a book. We went back the next day to pay up.
A cashless society, like everything with computer, information control or centralize power, is fine when you are riding the happy path.
As soon as you are not inline with society, or that slthe system itself become no more adapted to it's context, it's a nightmare.