Back in January 2007, I wrote an article,What Jobs told me on the iPhone, for the Guardian Newspaper. It was three years before the iPhone was introduced. It was also back when you could get a decent check for writing a good article. Certainly, that long ago none of us even Steve Jobs had any idea of the seismic change that smartphones were about to bring to all our lives.
The iPhone was introduced in January 2010. I finally got a Droid (Android smartphone) in March of that same year. I went with Android for three reasons, I know how Apple works (they are a money machine), I needed better phone reception (Verizon had better reception, AT&T had the iPhone, and I was interested in maps, GIS, and mapping. I judged the Android-Google-Map connection better than that of the iPhone.
So I joined the Google-Android world and have never really regretted it. I even ditched Verizon over four years ago and signed up with Google FI. My wife had been on a flip phone. Our service her flip phone and my smartphone with Verizon was regularly over $120. With two smartphone on Google FI our charges for the two phones were around $53 a month. Perhaps my wife getting a smartphone a few years ago was fortuitous. She was a proficient computer user but had done little texting. In the last four years, texting has become the choice for informal communications. I have to say it was only the tip of the iceberg.
Here we are in September 2022. After today's experience at a nearby DMV office, I am not sure how citizens of North Carolina without smartphones and the smarts to use them are going to survive. Over a month ago, I made an appointment to get my NC Real ID Driver's License. I wanted to get it done before my passport expired. The passport expires this month and I suspect it might take a while to get it renewed. It turned out that what most impressed them was an original notarized copy of my birth certificate. What shocked me was how deep technology had penetrated the world of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) which impacts almost all of us.
We pulled into the DMV parking lot in one of the most rural of North Carolina areas. We got the last parking spot. I smiled at my wife knowing that she might regret coming if the wait ended up very long. As I walked inside I was greeted by a large sign with a QR code. The sign asked me like the one you see in the post to scan the QR Code to check in. I was getting some first-hand experience with Q-Anywhere, the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles app to make it easier to get services. It is a great idea but I watched as a number of baffled people waiting patiently to see if they could get around the system. When one of the two employees finally had time, they were told politely that the QR code or the less prominently displayed texting options were the only way to show up for appointments.
I heard at least one person say, but I don't have a smart phone. Even for someone like me (drenched in technology), the experience wasn't seamless. I scanned the QR code using the camera app on my Google Pixel 6 phone, touched the URL which showed up and quickly got to the right website to send a text, but the cell service was going in and out (too far from the 5G towers?) so I had to step outside to send the text response.
That worked fine and I got this message.
NCDMV: You have checked in successfully. Your ticket number is A123. Please proceed to the lobby, you will be called shortly. Msg/Data rates may apply. -Reply STOP to opt-out
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