Because this topic came up in c/technology and I was wondering.
Would this be feasible? How bad would it be to your social life?
I’m looking for these scenarios:
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No smartphone, but have a dumbphone and a computer
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No phone at all, but have a computer
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No smartphone, but have a dumbphone, no computer
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Nothing at all
it’s not even about a smartphone, it’s about being allowed to access services with said smartphone.
when the ticket machine was removed from a train station in rural sweden and replaced with a note on how to buy tickets online, it instantly locked three types of people out: people who don’t have a smartphone, people who don’t have a payment card, and tourists. because it required online verification, you basically needed a swedish phone number and id to buy tickets.
this was about eight years ago, so smartphone penetration was lower, but i still think about the people i met at the train station while i desperately tried to order tickets over the phone and kept getting stuck in their automated phone tree. they were basically stuck there.
Why would they lock out tourists from public transport?
it wasn’t intentional. they just didn’t think about how to implement it. took them four or five years to fix.