The Coyote's confessions
Rest easy if you've never watched Looney Tunes — today isn't about those characters.
For someone my age, it's easy to recall the antics of Road Runner, that fast bird who always gets away, and Wile E. Coyote, who dreams up schemes that always backfire on him.
But draw a parallel with how hard the ordinary person finds it to keep up with technology, and you could almost say technology is today's Road Runner — and all of us, the hapless Coyote.
Take the property sector as a concrete example. Fifteen years ago — but also ten, and maybe even five — taking a set of listing photos meant a digital camera, or, for the more advanced among us, hiring a photographer who also had a digital camera, just a better one. Today, a mobile phone, a wireless connection, and the shoot is done in an instant. Except nothing happens without a few drone shots. Or without a reel on social media — provocative, preferably — it's as if the house doesn't even exist.
When a property lacks that certain appeal, AI images are always there to fix it. And the copy — which, let's face it, most of us agree hardly anyone reads, but which Google sniffs out constantly? No problem, AI is there to lend that professional touch everyone can now show off.
Paper documents? A relic of the past! Everything today is scanned, emailed, and stored in data centres. Security? Compliance? Forgery? That's not today's subject. Legislation and legal obligation? Of course, essential — but what about the fear so many people develop from the relentless stream of warnings about being hacked? The near-terror many feel when asked for a piece of information or a document, faced with a risk so vast they can't really grasp it? We'll talk about that another time.
Right now, technology doesn't evolve in years — it evolves in hours. I see little concern for adapting technology to people; quite the opposite, in fact. People are forced to adapt themselves and to understand technology, as if their very existence depended on it.
And just like the Coyote, however many schemes people come up with, they're always inexorably beaten by today's lightning-fast Road Runner: technology.
My professional career began, informally at first, in 1976, perhaps 1977 — almost 50 years ago. I've always worked with people, sometimes end clients, but mostly B2B. All that time puts me in a position to have the presumption of understanding a little of what most people feel today.
It isn't only change itself that shapes how we perceive reality — it's the growing disconnection many feel as they stop understanding the world around them. And the more they disconnect, the less they understand the world they live in.
On the other side of the equation are those keeping pace with all these developments, at speed, but who, in the end, don't have the time to realise there are different realities, different people, and even different moments in people's lives. Is technology making these people distant from reality, and numb to the world around them? Take those situations becoming common today — at the scene of an accident, the video comes first, and only then the help for the victims.
Selling homes is demanding work. People end up expecting a great deal from us and, sometimes without realising it, end up giving something of themselves too. Sometimes, bonds remain long after the contracts are done.
When our focus stops being solely the glory of closing the deal — and age has given me exactly that — we get the chance to really look at people, and the nerve to notice the difficulties they feel: some from giving the impression of understanding technology all too well, others from not understanding it at all.
And make no mistake: this isn't a matter of age. I know twenty-somethings who are completely lost, and sixty-somethings who dance with technology as if they'd been born inside it.
At this point, I'll venture, the reader might ask: so now what? Do we stop technology's progress? Do we segregate people? The easy, comfortable answer would be: no! Absolutely not! But the solution can't be either of those — somewhere, common sense will have to prevail.
I refuse to accept that the world we live in should carry on down this path. But beyond that simple conviction, all that's left to me is doubt and uncertainty.
How do we bring technology back to a human scale? Has legislating faster and faster ever really been the answer? There is, however, something even less predictable than legislation. What if, without warning, the world as we know it today were to change, as we've recently seen happen to so many people? Is it conceivable that technology, through forces beyond our control, could stop being the engine that now accelerates our lives?
Like a child, I seem to have returned to the 'why' phase, forever looking for reasons to understand how things work. My own limitations don't let me go much further. Besides, I think even presuming to understand something as complex as people is already biting off more than I can chew.
Goodness! There are moments I miss the days when I'd get up terribly early with the sole aim of selling something to someone, and come home very late — tired, but sometimes satisfied. When I'd finish filling out order forms on paper and slip them into an envelope, to go out by post the next day, or when completing a deed meant a family dinner out was justified, followed by a post: 'Another One Sold!'
The good old days? They don't exist — the good times are the ones we're alive for. Today, my only ambition is to keep enough presence of mind to carry on, with all the natural limitations most human beings share, understanding a little of the world I live in, and hoping I can still find my place within it.
Beep beep! Beep beep!