Modern life

The phrase ‘computer says no’ now has its own Wikipedia page. The first recorded use dates back to a Stasi-era 1970s East German film segment titled ‘Der Computer Sagt: Nein’. However, its idiomatic use arose in 2004 via a series of sketches in Little Britain, each illustrating an example of technology-enabled bureaucratic intransigence, typically flying in the face of common-sense human judgment. It is perhaps the 21st-century equivalent of ‘jobsworth’. To behavioural scientists, the phrase illustrates something known as ‘defensive decision-making’, whereby the primary motivation for a decision is not the likely quality of the outcome but the decision-maker’s often unconscious urge to use any available means to offload accountability for his actions.

The bank was having Transgender Visibility Day when I popped in to deposit some cash.The stressed-looking customers, meanwhile, seemed mostly like they were having Affluence Invisibility Day. One woman was complaining bitterly that £4,000 had been transferred to the wrong place and the bank wouldn’t give it back. I put my hand on the cash in my purse and stroked it a little. I’m amazed we are still allowed to keep cash. I’m sure they would have liked to have got rid of it by now. Thankfully, I had some so I could put it in my account to stave off overdraft text alerts because nothing else had gone through electronically, because of some malfunction in the system delaying things a few days.