Automation And My Yearning For Eventually Embrace of Efficiency.

I live in a developing country. I have been fortunate to travel to countries like the UK, Germany and the United States. In my travels, I have been able to see difference of cultures and how things are done. But they all seem to have one thing in common: Use of technology to make things more efficient.

I am a big fan of all things efficient. If something can replace a human to get things done quicker, I’m all for it. Self checkout at supermarket stores? Yep, I’m all for that. Living in a cashless society where basically almost anything is bought with the swipe of a card? Sign me up for that!

Of course, living in a developing country, most of the things I said above will come in time. The structures are being put in place to develop but there are times where the structures are in place but there’s not enough patronage to move things forward. The use of cards to pay for goods has been introduced but the adoption of it is painfully slow. Some blame could be on the marketing aspect of the use of cards. Another aspect is because citizens mostly rely on cash for transactions. It really pains me when I see a person basically pull out a money bag when he or she has to pay for a high priced item in a store. I remember when I wanted to purchase a smartphone, this was my experience:

Walked into the store, looked at the price of the phone and asked the sales person if they take debit/credit cards. She said they do not but they hoped they would do that soon.Walked out of the store, went to the nearest ATM, withdrew a large stack of paper money, took an envelope that was in my bag, put the money in it and walked back to the store. Gave the sales person the envelope, she took out the money, counted all of it before I could get my phone. These series of events took about 20 minutes.

Here’s an experience I had in Houston when buying a smartphone:

Walked into the AT&T store, saw the phone I wanted, checked the price, walked to the sales person and told him the phone I wanted. He went to the back of store, brought back the phone, asked for ID, signed a 2 year contract (I hate that part), gave him my debit card, signed electronically, got my receipt with my phone and walked out the store. Total time: 5-6 minutes.

The main point I’m trying to make is that adopting technologies that can speed up processes are the best. Don’t get me started on the process of what it’s like to do transactions in a bank….

Status quo is the problem. Nobody is really pushing for change. Everything is comfortable with what is already provided. They are frustrated, they complain but they don’t push for something different.

Change will eventually come. More things will get automated. But I wonder if they would come faster if people pushed more for a better system.