Anyway, the one thing that really caught my attention during the interminable amounts of the day that I spent traipsing round airports was the number of push-button feedback points I encountered. I think virtually every toilet, definitely every security point, possibly even an airside pub and certainly a check-in area had one of those little pads with a range of coloured faces upon which one is supposed to register one's feelings about a recent experience. I'm kind of fascinated to know what sort of data is collected from these things or what sort of data it is hoped can be collected from them. They're clearly designed to be as straightforward as possible to encourage even the most reluctant giver of feedback to have a quick stab at a button on the way past, but even so, you're not going to get anywhere near full coverage. Certainly most of the units I saw stood lonely and unpressed as people swarmed past them. Surely people only engage with these things when they are really really pissed off, or bored. Taking the airport security example, how many people are going to think "I had an exceptionally good experience being asked to get partially undressed and then having my possessions scanned in an air of constant (if friendly) suspicion and accusation"?
Perhaps it's just me that doesn't get it, perhaps people come through airport security at a particular airport and think that it was a notably better experience than at any other airport and that they should register that fact using a little coloured button. Presumably they are not travelling during the school holidays. And I think that is my point, because the amount of mitigating factors that would have to be added to data gathered from these little consoles must render the data virtually meaningless.
This leads me to my second conclusion: that these consoles are not actually gathering data at all, they are merely there to pander to our impotent desire for agency in all things. A line of brightly coloured buttons means "your opinion doesn't count, but if you think it does, you'll shut up and go away." If you've had a terrible time at airport security, the chances are if you're allowed to register your displeasure instantly by punching a big red button, you'll feel your feelings have been noted and wander off to duty free with your rage sated. If that rage had no such outlet, there is a much greater likelihood that you will stew over it and then write an email to someone who has to respond when you get home.
When I first got on Twitter, I decided it was a great place to vent my frustration at poor train services. If you included the Twitter account of the train operatior in your tweet, you often got a reply from a Media Studies graduate who would earnestly take the details of your problem and then confirm the information that you already knew from platform announcements or National Rail Enquiries. I don't blame the poor sod sat behind the rail company's Twitter handle, they are just doing a job, which is to prevent unhappy customers from becoming a problem. I've given up ranting at train companies on Twitter, as I've realised both the abject futility of the exercise* and how much of a whinge it makes me look (as if this blog wasn't enough), but many others continue to carry the torch for me, sending passive aggressively dotted tweets to rail companies so that all their friends and followers can see. I understand this - sharing your frustration can help to partially alleviate it - but really it is little different to standing there, stamping your feet and yelling incoherently (which, I can assure you, gets much more reaction). Indeed it is increasingly the case that the more we register our protest, the less effective it seems to be. I had hoped that the Internet would act as a tool for a more open democracy, but it seems that whilst it allows us to register out dissent more quickly and more easily, it also allows it to be ignored more readily. In the short life of the current parliament, the government has already ignored several petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people. These are people who feel strongly enough about something maybe to protest about it, but as there's a petition to sign, they're probably sated; they probably feel they've done their bit, registered their dissent, even though it is roundly ignored.
I read an interview with Yvette Cooper over the weekend where she complained that she had gone on hundreds of marches in the 80s and they'd changed nothing. She was basically pointing out that without power you can't change anything. Unfortunately she was also saying that to get power you have to become so massively compromised that you probably won't really change anything when you get it**. In the darkest days since the election, I have been convinced that she is right, but I can't really hold on to that belief (otherwise I might as well just kill myself), so I have to believe that there are alternatives. If the online petition is just a new and more effective form of opium for the masses, other more effective forms of digital protest and activism must be sought. I am not advocating that we all take to DDoSing ministers who ignore the weight of public opinion (largely because that is illegal), but ways of registering dissent and following up on them must become more effective than simply adding your digital signature to the list of the ignored.
We are told we live in a world where customer service is king, but it is all too often the case that 'customer service' is a euphemism for keeping the mugs quiet so they'll put up with whatever they get. All too quickly we have come to accept the stifling comfort of the empty feedback loop. We just keep jabbing at the little smiley faces.
*at least partly because in most instances there is absolutely nothing the train operators can do.
**or at least that is the practical example of the governments she served in.
