Between MyGate and my house, it is unfortunate that MyGate keeps winning

Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS

It is everywhere, all of us use it, and it rules over the lives of city dwellers like no other app, because often it controls whether they can enter their house in a fuss-free manner or not. Yes, I am talking about MyGate. And about NoBrokerHood.

There is an often-repeated – and hence somewhat cliched – quote by Rousseau: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” In a way, this quote is about bureaucracy, petty and big. Nowadays, I am reminded of this quote every time I enter my residential complex. MyGate, which my residential complex uses diligently, verifies me and certifies that I exist, that I am real, and that I live in the house I live in. It does so with a unique code – a number – or with a QR code. And as I recall the born-free quote, I also see the irony in the moment, because when I started living in this house, MyGate did not exist. Now, it is the app that validates my existence, metaphorically speaking.

In a way, this has been the story of our physical world gradually turning digital. What was solid once now doesn’t seem to exist unless it also exists in some way digitally. Consider a road or a shop. Does it exist if it is not on Google Maps? A SIM card, does it exist if it is not identifiable on TrueCaller? Does a restaurant exist if it is not on Zomato or Swiggy? Does a product exist and can be bought if it is not on Amazon or Blinkit? And not just the physical world but us humans too have been digitised and we too seem to exist in records only because there is a number attached to us. If a person is without Aadhaar, does she exist? I know many government departments will deny the existence of a person, even if that person is standing in flesh and blood in front of them, because she doesn’t have Aadhaar.

But let’s not go deep into these “existentialist” questions. We were talking about MyGate. NoBrokerHood. And the ilks. Though my residential complex has used MyGate for several years now, recently the app became the only way to gain entry into the gated community – unless one decides to ride in a Fortuner with tinted windows in which case all doors open in a city like Noida. The rule applies to all, irrespective of whether they own the house, rent it, or if they are just visiting. The experience, more often than not, is degrading at worst and hassling at best.

Across Indian cities, apps like MyGate and NoBrokerHood have become de facto authorities on controlling access to residential complexes. Their use is most likely without any legal backing. Making them mandatory for accessing personal property, like a house, is most likely illegal. In fact, in most instances, residents do not opt for these apps. The apps are forced on them. MyGate, NoBrokerHoo,d and others often work in sundry – and mysterious – ways with private security companies or certain people managing the residential complexes to embed themselves in people’s lives. Their pitch to people is that they can improve the security of a place. But their real motive is to collect data from their users so that they can sell services and ads to them.

I call MyGate and similar other apps part of techno-solutionism. This is an idea greatly pushed by Silicon Valley companies, that technology and apps can provide solutions to all issues, including complex and layered social issues. The idea is pushed even when it is evident that the technical solution would only gloss over the problem and not solve it. When these app-based solutions are added to the mix, they almost always result in a new layer of bureaucracy that is worse than the older bureaucracy. In the older one, at least, there are humans with whom you can argue. In the bureaucracy brought about by technology, nuances are lost. Instead, everything becomes binary, quite literally, as a person is reduced to a number and a QR code.

Even more alarmingly, apps like MyGate – and essentially most techno solutions – are exclusionary and predatory when it comes to collecting data.

They are exclusionary because they exclude people who are not familiar with technology or do not have access to it. They also exclude poor people who might not have a phone or a smartphone with them. They exclude people who might not know how to use technology. I came across another techno-solutionism recently. The Delhi Zoo has stopped selling tickets through a counter. Instead, all tickets need to be bought from the Zoo website. The hassle it creates for hundreds of zoo visitors, who are willing to pay cash at the counter for a ticket but are not allowed to, is immense. In some cases, the exclusions and divisions are even deliberately built into apps like MyGate. For example, I can rate my maid on it and leave a review, but my maid cannot respond to it.

And then there is privacy. The data collection and then sharing of this data with third parties is the least of the problems. A bigger issue is the personal data these apps leak all around them. For example, with MyGate and NoBrokerHood, certain people, who have been deemed “admins”, not only see but can also record and keep a copy of all my visitors. In most instances, MyGate users don’t even know who these “admins” are and what they are doing with this data.

Coming back to the chains of Rousseau, in our era, technology has increasingly become a form of chain. In ways that could be direct, and sometimes metaphorical, nowadays, we live lives where we have been tamed and are controlled using multiple tech solutions. And that probably explains why, nowadays, tech makes us miserable. It no longer feels like a tool that used to free us. Instead, now, whenever there is some new tech-based service or product, many of us don’t feel any excitement or joy. Instead, we groan – oh no, not another app!

(Javed Anwer is Technology Editor, India Today Group Digital. Latent Space is a weekly column on tech, world, and everything in between. The name comes from the science of AI and to reflect it, Latent Space functions in the same way: by simplifying the world of tech and giving it a context)

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)

SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA