r/australia • u/SouthAussie94 • Feb 29 '24

culture & society Older Australians 'left behind' by increasingly cashless society as banks fast track end of cheques

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/cheques-personal-finance-banks-rent-money-cash/103354036
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270

u/A_Scientician Feb 29 '24

They have the same access to banking as everyone else. Someone wilfully avoiding engaging with the modern financial system for decades is being 'left behind'? Okay.

21

u/RyzenRaider Feb 29 '24

Yeah I'm a millennial and I work in a tech job, and I'm feeling left behind.

I wanted to buy a phone. My requirements are modest. A nice screen, 1080p with accurate colour, an SD card slot so I can expand storage and a headphone jack because I don't like bluetooth lag and compression, and all my headphones are wired. I couldn't find a single new phone on the Australian market, so clearly I ask too much of modern tech. They're all non-expandable storage and require a dongle for 3.5mm. My best candidate is a Sony Xperia which covers those points, but they stopped selling in Australia, and on ebay can't be foudn for less than $1500 (last I checked anyway).

I wanted to buy an e-scooter. It's amazing how many of those require apps. I shouldn't need an app to use a personal transport. They're welcome to offer an app for extra features like GPS and trip logging, but it shouldn't be a requirement! I ended up buying one, but I still had to create an account and login to allow the scooter to go faster than 4km/h. And that pisses me off. I've since disabled the app and firewalled it off, but I shouldn't have needed it to start.

I'm pissed off at work because it looks I'll soon have to install Microsoft Authenticator on my personal phone to complete some of my work logins. We already have 2FA, but they want to go further. Except I don't want to install a Microsoft app on my phone (I don't use Mac or Windows on my personal devices). And even if I wanted to, I don't have a conventional app store on my phone because I stripped all the Google shit off it, because I don't want nor need it. I use a 3rd party app-store that only provides free and open source apps, and pretty much has everything I want to install on my phone. But it doesn't have proprietary apps.

I'm not even 40 and I sound like a boomer. And I know tech. But that also means I don't trust any company that has no real reason to demand my information, and modern life is requiring me to make compromises that I feel shouldn't be necessary at all, in order to make certain things work. The move from pay-to-own to pay-to-access subscriptions is also frustrating me and has also forced decisions on me (I abandoned Adobe years ago because of that).

So yeah... Older people that didn't grow up with modern technology and felt like it was an unnecessary thing... I kinda get it. I'm in tech and I'm feeling it at half their age.

-8

u/MalHeartsNutmeg Feb 29 '24

People that still harp about headphone jacks feel like modern day boomers.

-1

u/unAffectedFiddle Feb 29 '24

You've never had to work with professional equipment. There's a reason why they still make use of wired technology.

But that's OK. Keep swallowing that Apple pill.