The Great Internet Migration - the life and death of face-to-face

Les Deux Magots café in Paris, the penultimate face-to-face meeting place. For over a century, this legendary café became a place of debate for modern art, philosophy, and literature with the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, and Jim Morrison. Much of our culture emerges from face-to-face conversations.

by Gregory Saville 

One way to reduce crime is to cut crime opportunities – make it tough to steal or harder to assault. Another way is to cut the motives to commit crime – improve living conditions, treat substance abuse, or build positive social relations between people. In either case, we need a functioning community with decent livability where people enjoy engaging in social life. That means creating places where social life encourages positive, productive, and secure face-to-face socializing (a goal of SafeGrowth). 

That brings me to my recent visits to a nearby movie theater, a bank, and McDonald’s. In each of these places, I noticed a new design and marketing ethos creeping up on us. I am referring to the trend of forcing people to migrate away from face-to-face interactions and towards the internet, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies are forcing us to shop online, deliver goods remotely, and replace face-to-face conversations with technology. It’s difficult to know how far this will continue.

Will we learn how to retain meaningful face-to-face connections in the face of new technologies?

NO ANTI-LUDDITE 

I am not making the claim of an anti-technology Luddite. True, of late I have admittedly been obsessively critical of AI, security technology, and the HiDWON future of high-security enclaves. 

In truth, I know there is an important role for advanced technology, especially in urban safety. In Nihlism Nixed, I wrote about the undeniable improvement in our overall quality of life globally from improvements in technology. 

But there is no denying the inexorable shift in how we build cities, run our businesses, entertain ourselves, and shop. We are being drawn away from face-to-face, a trend with an ominous outcome if we want a safer social life where people interact in a positive, productive, and joyful way. 

 

...out with the old! Old-style movie theatre seating -
 photo Jorge Simonet, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wiki Commons

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Take movies! Films are no longer box office hits until they stream online. Movie-goers hardly seem to matter. Watching films on a smartphone, or streaming at home…that’s the thing. In a futile attempt to stem the tide of crashing ticket sales, brick-and-mortar theatres are ripping out their old-style seats and installing half as many seats designed as airline-style, 1st class beds/seats with nearby liquor lounges and boutique food.

 

... and in with the new!
The redesigned bed seat cinema as theatres struggle to recover lost seat sales from online streaming - photo by Startrain844, CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wiki Commons

Consider banks. Gone (or going fast) are counter stations with tellers to converse with, share stories, and learn firsthand about better interest rates. Wikipedia describes how in-person bank tellers are “most likely to detect and stop fraud transactions” and that their position “requires tellers to be friendly and interact with customers.” Apparently, banks have something else in mind.

Instead, banks want you online at your computer, transferring funds electronically, or standing in front of metallic ITMs, the new "interactive teller machines" (basically, a souped-up, quasi-AI ATM). Teller jobs are declining and banks are becoming nothing more than empty foyers, private offices, with no tellers at all. 

 

The new bank - no tellers, only empty lounges and ITMs 

Then consider McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast food chain, the restaurant for excited kids, and the PlayPlace area for toddlers, with a busy counter/drive-in service. The last time I visited McDonald’s I could not locate an employee. I eventually found her in a small nook behind the electronic E-clerks. Another example of face-to-face extinction! 

McDonald's... few employees. Instead, meet E-clerks

Few chairs and no people. Internet migration is working!

The article Robots will Replace Fast-Food Workers describes the automation in the fast food industry: 

"In 2013, the University of Oxford estimated that in the succeeding decades, there was a 92% probability of food preparation and serving becoming automated in fast food establishments."

THE INTERNET MIGRATION

I have not checked the data, but I predict the internet migration I describe here represents the largest immigration problem in history. I suspect some of the techno-crime-opportunity reduction theorists might celebrate. They do so foolishly. 

The truth is that we are social beings to the core. Our relationships define us. As philosopher and psychologist Viktor Frankl once wrote, we gain meaning from the world around us and through our relationships with each other – that is where we ultimately find meaning. 

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

The lack of meaningful, face-to-face relationships, and the social connections that emerge from them, make our lives poorer. Sustainably preventing crime becomes an unsolvable equation. And in that equation, loneliness is the enemy of meaning and purpose.