In the Parlance of Our Times

When I first started thinking about topics for this blog, banking didn't jump to mind. It's one thing I pretty much do the same way now that I did 30 years ago. ATMs were already in use back then, so pretty much the only change is that I occassionally check my balance online. If the web suddenly went away, it would have little impact on my banking.

But recent conversations have made me realize that younger people approach banking totally differently than I do. They rarely step inside a bank, doing all their banking at ATMs and online. One young person I spoke with told me a story about how he needed to deposit a check and get cash for a trip one day, and was at a loss how to do this when he arrived at the bank and found the ATM offline. He ended up going inside the bank to ask a teller to help him through this process.

My kids never open mail the bank sends them. They don't save receipts. They don't keep a written record of deposits and withdrawals. And believe me when I say that this isn't because they don't know better. They've been shown what they should be doing, but they don't see the point. They'll ask the ATM for a balance, or go online to see what's up with their account.

This is not a good thing. With years of banking experience behind me, I could tell you several war stories - most notably the time the bank made a withdrawal of $23,260.45 from my account which should have just been a $260.25 withdrawal. But young people seem to believe the bank is incapable of making mistakes. The concientious ones will keep a close eye on their account - online - but they still won't write down what they do or save receipts. If they want to see how much they took out of the ATM last month, they'll look online. If they want to see how much that check they deposited last week was for, they'll look online.

There's a clear winner here, and it's not these young people. The bankers must be dancing in the street.

I can't parallel park for beans. Ask anyone. I'll walk an extra mile to get a parking space I can drive into, rather than even attempt to parallel park, especially in a city.

So I was very excited to see the new Lexus ads, with the car that parallel parks itself. Not that I'm in any danger of being able to afford this car. But I'm excited that the technology is being developed and that maybe, one day, it will be good enough and cheap enough to be a worthwhile option.

The New York Times published a review of the Lexus parking system this weekend. It sounds like it has a long way to go before it will be useful. Currently it (a) requires that you identify an appropriate space yourself and (b) recommends that such a space allow three feet of clearance at the front and the rear of the car. Even I can parallel park in a space with that much clearance!

But the article also talks about other manufacturers working on similar systems, some which hunt for appropriate spaces for you. One scans both sides of the road as you slowly drive around. Even better would be a system that scans the internet for open spaces - there are already web sites online for certain cities to help drivers find open parking spaces.

The big question is whether the public will embrace these automatic parking systems enough for them to become both better and cheaper. City dwellers, apparently, don't see the need. They're happy to bump and scrape and most likely no automated system will ever be able to get into as small a space as these expert parallel parkers can manage on their own. People living outside a city usually have plenty of parking choices available, either nose-in or parallel spaces with lots of clearance. So I'm not really sure who the audience for this system is, except those like me with a pathological fear of parallel parking. I don't think there are that many of us.

I'm afraid this will be the picture phone of my senior years--a promise that will take another 40 years to be fulfilled. Time will tell.

The first house we bought, in early 1981 Ireland, didn't have a landline. The previous owners had applied for one, but there was a long waiting list and we were facing into another 18 months before we'd finally have a phone. Having lived until that point with a telephone in every dwelling, life without a landline was a bit inconvenient but we managed.

So I find it amusing that my children have chosen not to install landlines in their apartments. Not that it's the same now as it was for us. Back then we used a neighbor's phone or, if we could find one that worked, a payphone. We made appointments to be near a phone so that we could receive a call at Christmas or for a birthday. These arrangements had to be done via mail - international mail at that - since there were few other communication options at that time.

My kids use cell phones, of course. They're not giving up anything when they choose not to install a landline. Rather, they're simply doing away with a redundant utility. It makes perfect sense that they not bother installing a service they don't need, especially at this stage in life when they tend to move often.

So we share an early adulthood experience with our kids - no landlines - but the results couldn't be more different. We were never reachable. They're always reachable. I kind of think that we had the better deal. Our parents couldn't call us and we couldn't call them. We were truly on our own, figuring out for ourselves how to do all those things that you do when you first leave home. There may have been times we'd have liked some advice, but mostly we were quite happy making it up as we went along. Besides, the parents had already spent years preparing us for this time, to the point where we could pretty much predict what they'd say to any situation. Michael used to say every time he got soaked in a downpour that he heard his mother in his head saying "Change every stitch!"

I need to remember this the next time I reach for the phone because it's been a while since I've heard from one of the kids. They're fine. And if not, we're in their heads telling them exactly what to do. I just hope they're listening.

I love my iPod. Seriously.

Thirty years ago I made the first of a series of moves, two of which crossed an ocean. In each case, I had to limit what I could bring with me and for every move a part of my record (read: vinyl) collection didn't make the cut. Michael went through the same thing, both with me and before we met. By 1987 we were reduced to a dozen or so records between us.

It has to be said, I was never too gone on the vinyl. I hated having to get up from what I was doing to flip the record every 20 minutes or so. As we replaced the vinyl with CDs the time I had between changes doubled, but it was still far too inconvenient for me. So when I got my iPod in 2003 what I loved the most was that I could connect it to my stereo at home or in the car and have hours of my music playing without having to lift a finger.

But today I walked by Tom's room and noticed that all his CDs are still here. He left them behind when he moved to Boston, but he didn't leave any of his music behind. It all went with him in his pocket.

I really love my iPod.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm a technology junkie. I'm a big fan of a lot that technology can do for us. But I have a huge concern about one major consequence of many new technologies and that's the erosion of our privacy.

I expect I'll write a lot more about this in future posts. But before doing so I wanted to make two points.

First, the irony of writing about loss of privacy on a blog is not lost on me. The privacy issue is one reason I've stayed away from blogging as long as I have. When I decided to take the plunge my co-worker, James, who is well aware of my feelings on this front, wrote "Welcome to the dark side. Privacy is overated". We'll see about that.

Second, I do not come to my views about loss of privacy lightly. Thirty years ago the boyfriend of a housemate at the time sat at my dining room table spouting what seemed like paranoid nonsense about privacy and banking. I was never very fond of this person, and took pleasure in arguing the issue with him. And so it pains me greatly to find myself now on the same side of the privacy debate as him.

Believe me, if I could still convince myself that there was nothing to be concerned about, I would.

We'll be having a decidedly low tech Thanksgiving again this year. But for those of you who aren't disconnected for the holiday, here are some treats from two of my nearest and dearest:

Take a look at Louise's website, louisebarry.net. Many of her Paper Trails pieces are still available to buy at $10 a pop. Email me if you're interested. I have a basement full of them.

Tom doesn't have a website and as far as I know has nothing to sell yet. But I've posted two of the songs he recorded with his bands this summer. It was fun going to his concerts while he was home.

• Amani Funktet playing Little Wing, by Jimi Hendrix
• Root 5th playing Severed Negotiations

Happy Thanksgiving!

Every time I look at a grocery store register slip and see I could have saved $5 on a $25 purchase if I had used their loyalty card I get angry. Why are the stores being so agressive about getting us to sign up for their cards? They already have agreggate data they can sell - how many people in our area buy Product X on a Thursday in May, for example - and if they really just want our loyalty they could give us coupons at the register ($5 off your next purchase, for instance).

Whatever the stores claim, these cards are absolutely about tying what you buy to who you are. There can only be one reason the stores want this information, and that's to sell it to someone who cares about it. And you can bet they're making more from the data than they're giving us back with discounts.

I have so far refused to be bought. The grocery store is one of the few places where it's still possible to shop anonymously - provided you pay cash and don't use their card - and I'd like to hang on to this last thread of privacy as long as I can.

But I'm weakening.

I have already given in to other loyalty programs, in particular hotels and airlines. In these cases I figure I get more than I give, since just by using their service they already get all of my personal information. When it comes to the supermarket, though, I can't get past the feeling that by signing up for their card I'm giving up something I'll never get back. At the moment, I'm still willing to pay the price for my privacy.

I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. I'm working on my pseudonym and false address for the day when I finally cave. Just my little way of sticking it to the man.