Last year's Palme dOr at Cannes was the British film I, Daniel Blake. It was a fantastic gut punch for how even well-intentioned technology is leaving behind parts of society. My partner and I had a very heated 2 hour discussion after watching it.
I, Daniel Blake has absolutely nothing to do with technology and people being left behind.
It's entirely about the fucking awful mess caused by the Conservative government introducing Universal Credit and a punitive benefits regime.
Being fully tech proficient won't prevent a Universal Credit claimant from being sanctioned.
Daniel Blake has heart problems and is advised by his doctor not to work. But he fails his independent medical.
Here's a real life example: A man with heart problems was told not to work. He has the medical. He has a heart attack during the medical, and the independent assessor has to call an ambo.
To you or me this is proof he's not faking and he really is ill.
To the government he didn't complete the medical, which is a sanctionable failing.
> Again, I support the principle of a sanctions regime. If somebody consistently fails to turn up for work experience or a Work programme scheme, sanctions should be applied. However, I believe that sanctions are being applied indiscriminately. For example, one of my constituents was a beneficiary of employment and support allowance after they had retired on grounds of ill health as a result of a heart problem. He was required to attend a work capability assessment with Atos. During
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> the assessment, he was told that he was having a heart attack and the nurse said that she had to stop the assessment. He got a letter a couple of weeks later saying that he had withdrawn from the assessment and, as such, was being sanctioned. That beggars belief. I have other examples, as I am sure do colleagues.
I mean, in a way the benefit system is a well-intentioned technology. And the austerity measures that led up to brexit were constraints on the design, that more or less broke the benefit system for edge case users.
How much commercially successful technology is well intentioned? Does Google's philanthropy make up for its advertising? Facebook's? Is the iPhone well intentioned?
I feel like many big corps do some good as an offset to their mostly bad, with a net negative gain.
Watch the film I, Daniel Blake, because my comment is kind of dependent on that.
The movie does such a good job portraying how change is inevitable. From an American pov, I've always admired how the UK has stuff like Gov.uk, a real at-the-forefront use of technology to make government more transparent and efficient, not to mention cool. It has always seemed functional and user-oriented. And, it's lightyears ahead of anything we have in the US to centralize or standardize basic stuff like paper forms.
But then in the movie, you see a guy that you probably know try to run a mouse up a computer screen to complete an unemployment form, by physically placing the mouse on the screen. And then get frustrated when he's not allowed help, but then asks 3 different young people walking by to help him navigate the form, before the form times out and he loses all his data.
Like, even if the developers and designers of the website tried with all their effort to make their page accessible and even more user friendly, what can be done? The enemy isn't the government for trying to modernize, and it's not poor people who may or may not have gotten stuck in time for whatever reason. The enemy is just change, where you don't realize these stories exist. So to bring it back to the OP - there is a real value in seeing and hearing these stories.
Could the problem be the UX? Would a touch interface have been a solution? The screen is divided into four contrasting squares, tap the one that describes what you are trying to do. Sign your name with your finger, etc.
I don't think we should caste problems into a grey zone that nobody is responsible for (change). I think we should approach problems from different angles until we find a solution.
Definitely, but even if you had all the time and resources in the world, you'll never get things perfect. So if you operate off that assumption, then maybe it forces you to consider that some people will be left behind by the thing you make - and what then? Hopefully to do something about it and not forget.
