What happens if you take away people’s right to shop?
Why the future of online purchasing might be defeated by a teenage girl in Primark.
Last year, when we were finally released from the first lockdown, my partner and I decided to go for a walk along the river near our old flat. To reach this river, we had to walk down the local high street.
The streets were busy — at least, they seemed busy compared to the relative ghost town we had seen before then. We debated what sights we’d see, and where people would gather. Neither of us was hugely shocked to see a massive queue of people, but we were slightly surprised to pass the front of the queue and realise that people were queuing to get into Primark.
This is not going to be a diatribe against fast fashion — the problems with that are well established. My partner grew up outside of Britain and doesn’t always understand the behaviour of working class Brits on an emotional level. At the time she was quite shocked — “You’ve been locked away for months, and the first thing you do when you get out is come to Primark?” A discussion followed, which led to me pointing out that, for a lot of people, how they consume is now part of their personality.
Again, this is not a criticism. Drop me in a record shop or 2nd hand book shop and I WILL come out with a purchase in my hand. I do think, however, that modern western capitalism tries to persuade people that how they spend their money is how they define themselves. I’m not just talking about ‘representing our personality through what we purchase’, which is fairly basic psychology/sociology. It’s not just a matter of wearing certain brands or designs — the act of using your money to purchase something is an important part of the process. There is a difference between wearing a branded t-shirt you were given as a Christmas present and choosing to go into a Superdry outlet because you want to tell everyone that you now identify as a middle-aged man. By spending money on an item, you are saying (to yourself, as much as the people around you) this is who I am.
All of this is background for me to say the following: I don’t think predictive transactions will work.
I made a note of the term ‘Predictive Transactions’ a few weeks ago when I read it in an article on the Venturebeat site. The concept is obviously nothing new — we’ve all heard of the Internet of Things ordering milk for us when the fridge realises it’s empty — but this was the first article that I’d read that used the phrase like a horny teen describing a porn mag he stumbled across in the forest.
“There is a powerful disruption coming; perhaps, the most powerful since computerized transaction processing was invented in 1964. Predictive transaction processing is about to upend the model of the last 57 years of computing and change the way we live, work, shop, and entertain…consumers will be able to let Amazon handle their daily purchases, giving them back time in their busy lives. In terms of logistics, last-mile delivery technology will ensure that people get what they want when they need, easing the traffic congestion caused by delivery trucks currently hindered by uncertain time frames and unavailable customers.”
A powerful disruption in your pants, maybe. Side note — 57 years is a remarkably specific timeframe, no?
I understand the argument — by removing the need for people to dedicate any time to the process of purchasing, people can save the time for the things they actually enjoy. Netflix and Spotify already use an algorithm to predict what we might want to watch or listen to, so why not just let Amazon buy things for us before we event decide we want them?
There are MANY problems with the article — not least the middle class assumption that everyone is wealthy enough to be fine handing access to their account over to a system outside of their control, the hand-wavy ‘it’ll all be grand’ approach that suggests driverless cars and other improvements will just happen eventually because the tech gods have willed it. There are plenty of people more qualified to take apart the tech-utopianism and solutionist approaches there.
However, the one that struck me the most was the failure to understand that for a lot of people, the act of purchasing is the enjoyable part.
All the talk of health improvements brought about by using vapes focus on the reduction of tar and carcinogens compared to using cigarettes — but none of them make a big deal of removing nicotine, because it’s understood that the nicotine is the thing the smokers want.
I remember reading about the issue of ‘eggless cake mix’ — I think in the first Freakonomics book. The concept was that when presented with a cake mix that just required water, housewives felt guilty that they weren’t doing enough work. When, instead, given a cake mix that also required beating in a fresh egg, the additional work required removed the sense of guilt, and led to better sales.
You can read a summary of the theory here. It’s worth pointing out that their summary isn’t quite accurate — the idea that all-in-one cake mixes weren’t selling until someone removed the egg is wide of the mark, according to Snopes, but the idea that someone making a cake does want to do some actual work to create something holds up. Sure, they may use a cake mix, but they’ll then spend the extra time decorating the cake to feel that they’ve achieved something.
In the article, the author Arthur Chuang (from the unfortunately named ‘Race Capital’) makes a comparison to Spotify playlists — but I don’t think that’s quite right. Sure, the algorithm might suggest new songs and load them up for you, but it’s still relying on your thumbs-up or thumbs-down to work out whether you liked it. You still have to make the choice to load up Spotify and choose whether your mood is ‘Upfront party vibes’ or ‘cry-wanking to pics of my ex’. You might be happy with Spotify making suggestions, but you still want the final say on whether you’re actually going to listen to it.
Those people queued outside Primark were perfectly capable of ordering clothes online. They weren’t prevented from buying clothes during the lockdown, or from spending money. They were prevented from taking part in the whole process — the ritual — of going to Primark, trying on clothes, handing over money or a card and feeling like their choice, their limited budget, and their particular style combined to create something unique.
The author talks a lot about Predictive Transactions ‘saving people time to focus on what they really want to do’. I wonder if Mr Chuang can think of a single thing that people enjoy that can’t be automated? He keeps coming back to TikTok, and how great it is that you can just sit there and blindly be fed a constant stream of ‘stuff you like’. As usual, the final section sums up his position perfectly:
“…wise investors will take a lesson from this new paradigm: It’s time to look forward, and make decisions now about where to put your money knowing what is coming.”
That’s it, isn’t it? In an ideal world, nobody will think, or move, or make any real choices. You’ll just sit there while money is taken from you, and a constant stream on content is fed into your brain, with a green button for ‘yay’ and a red button for ‘nay’ your only necessary means of communicating with the world.
I’m rarely optimistic, but I think this might be a step too far. You can take a lot from people — clean air, open spaces, safe affordable housing, any meaningful political choices — but you’ll remove their ability to spend their money on dumb crap from their cold, dead hands.
Apparently, that’s what counts for optimism in my world now.