One of the best technical book I read last year is Design Data-Intensive Applications. My favorite chapter is a non-technical one – Doing the Right Thing. I can’t recall the exact Google early day slogan. It is something like collect the world’s information and make it easily accessible to everyone. (Update: according to this article, it’s something like organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.) This clear, straightforward and right thing is both actionable and profitable. You may want to pursue it for your life.

Uber found another simple, straightforward and right thing. Collect world’s vehicle information and make it easy for people to commute.

I don’t have much personal experience with Uber, but I have a story about Didi. A few months ago, my sister and I made a journey to Taihang Grand Canyon. We encountered two men in their 60s. It was in a small restaurant in Taohua Valley. We broke the ice by regretting eating there. We talked about where we had been, how we got here and where we were going. I was surprised to find out they paid a large sum of money to get Taohua Valley from another scenic area (the exact name escaped my memory). We took a taxi from Anyang downtown directly to Linzhou. This did not cost much more than the money they paid. I told them they can use Didi to avoid price-gouging as it would show the bills beforehand. It never occurred to me that they didn’t know how to use Didi. How stupid of me to assume everyone is so tech-savvy. They complained that there was no alternative for them. Didi was too complicated for them. And there was no bus, no taxi here. It was a price they must pay for their technology illiteracy?

Of course, it is hard for Didi to educate a wider range of people or make its app more accessible, and Didi didn’t make the old men pay the exorbitant bill. On the contrary, the old men would benefit a lot if they can learn to use Didi. Still, I can’t help think it was the easy accessibility of Didi to young people that facilities the death of taxi in this area. The old men can no longer hail a fair taxi easily. 我不杀伯仁，伯仁却因我而死。

This is not a singular case. Entrepreneurs pride themselves in the disruptive technologies they provided for the world. The best of those technologies are elixirs promised to cure everything, and they spread like a virus. Some obsolete technology are declared death for a good reason, while some died in a pitiful young age.

I was once overjoyed to discover an obsolete form factor of mobile phones – the flip phone. My grandma is in her 80s. Not only I can’t expect her to learn to use a glamorous smartphone, the good old Nokia phones also don’t suit her well. It is universally acknowledged that you need to unlock the phone before using it. Unlocking a good old feature phone usually requires pressing two different keys. This is a slick design to avoid accidental unlocking of the phone in the pocket, especially when you can randomly press the physical buttons to make a phone call with feature phones. Unfortunately, it is a big cognitive load for my grandma to remember which keys to press (and in what order). Moreover, my grandma’s fingers have become kind of numb. They can’t move too quick. She can’t make it within the slim time window. I was in ecstasy to learn that flip phone requires no unlocking. You can just flip the phone and use it. Smartphones are transformative in every aspect of the daily life of those who use it. And by accident, they changed those who do not use it forever. I could have thought of buying my grandma a flip phone earlier. But I am too accustomed to the dichotomy of slate smartphone and bar feature phone as all other form factors quickly become extinguished.

It is a cliché in the movies that people stay too long in the prison can’t adjust themselves to the ever-changing outside world. As a matter of fact, the world is not much more queer to those who have lost the best years of their life in the prison than those who didn’t catch up. My grandma has been left behind for long. The world has become more and more grotesque for her. The Internet TV isn’t even good for the 6:50 weather forecast. Why is pinning a channel like Hunan Satellite TV so hard?

I, myself, am also a stranger in a strange land.

I slept a few nights over the floor cover of my workplace, as hotels would not admit me unless I have a valid health code, which I should have no good reason to not have. I was in a low infection rate area for a long time, which had been much safer than X (let X be the city where I currently work) since the inception of this pandemic. X had a stringent health code requirement. Everyone is mandated to provide to the travel history of the last 14 days. Of course, you can’t fabricate it easily. You must obtain a travel history report from your mobile phone operator, who has stored your recent location information. And this system relies on Wechat or Alipay to prove your identity, which make sure you are the person in possession of the mobile phone number. A responsive smartphone with decent connectivity should be a basic human right. Wechat and Alipay have infiltrated this country long before. This theoretically shouldn’t be much of a burden. Compared with many elders, I am lucky enough to have a smartphone. And yes, I have an Alipay account (I was young and naive). Much to my regret, my Alipay account was bound to a Google Voice phone number, which was an untested edge case for the health code system. I can’t receive any verification code. Naturally, I won’t be able to provide the needed travel history with this number even if I can bypass the verification. My only choice was to use my domestic phone number. Unfortunately, this gate was also closed. The health code system will only acknowledge my new phone number a week after my change in Alipay. It was clearly stated in the FAQ of the health code program that they can’t help me in this case. I called 12345 in vain. All that I can do was wait. Luckily, the floor cover was comfortable enough.

I don’t think I will encounter many more pandemics in my life. But I have more cases to show how the world has become ridiculous to me (or how I have become unreasonable to the world). I once tried to apply for a deposit card (required for social security) from China Merchants Bank, one of the twelve government-certificated banks who can issue deposit card for social security. I went to the branch office only to find out they only support electronic application. All I need to do was following their official account and filling in my personal information. They wouldn’t accept application in the paper form anymore. It was for everyone’s best interest. It seemed to me China Merchants Bank was a little disingenuous in its endeavor to paperless office. Little was known to it that this effectively reduced many elders’ choice for social security card. (Well, I was in Shenzhen then, widely praised for its youth in the sense that it has not many elders). A fire and forget website access was good enough for this kind of task. Why must it rely on a proprietary platform like Wechat. Is it more convenient to open a website with Wechat? Or is it more convenient to send an unsolicited advertisement with Wechat? I immediately filed a complaint to China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. The recipient claimed that a commercial bank has every right to reserve their service only to the customers they deemed appropriate. I emphasized that it was a basic human right to have a social security card, and this was how citizens are prevented from having one. It was the commission’s responsibility to regulate this kind of business activities. Lately, I was invited to the branch office to fill in the paper form. It was a big success.

Here is another major frustration. Every time I eat out, I feel like I am an idiot trying to fight the whole world. Business-owners have become increasingly hostile to paper money. Customers must pay with themselves Wechat payment or Alipay to eliminate changes. I am not convinced that everyone is ready. We still need a feature gate to switch on/off this futuristic way of payment. Opting in and not being able to turn off will hurt so many people without a smartphone. It is hard to refrain myself when my friendly request to pay with paper money was adamantly refused. I have lost my temper a few times. I hysterically raged “Why can’t I use paper money? You are against the regualations of the Central Bank.” I also threaten business-owners to take whatever necessary measures to accept my paper money, or else I would report it to relevant government department immediately. To this day, all the business-owners compromised to my threatening. I am not always so lucky in my other fighting. Whenever I hear you can self-order with the barcode on the table, I would ask “Must I self-order?” I will immediately quit the restaurants upon receiving a negative response, as I have no handy sword to fight off this dragon. I choose to run away. Thanks, self-ordering is cool, but I’d rather not following your official account and not paying with Wechat payment.

I’d like to conclude this rant with a tweet

Accessibility isn’t more work, you were just cutting corners before. The work was incomplete.

If you can’t “afford to” “deliberately improve” the accessibility of your human-facing services, please at least make less extraneous assumptions and prepare an escape latch.