Do you mind if I get personal?
Explaining why I feel moved to run this campaign, entirely in my free time, isn’t always easy. It depends a little on whom I’m speaking to. There are a few categories they might fall into.
Some people understand the digital coercion problem intuitively.
Others see what I’m getting at but don’t consider it a problem.
Then there are those who acknowledge the issue, but aren’t willing to resist or protest.
Finally, there is the group that just can’t see what I’m on about at all.
When it comes to the last three categories, maybe the storytelling could use some work. Trying to explain things in terms of theory and trends has its limits.
That’s why I want to get real today. I’m going to tell tangible tales. These are the true experiences that first enlightened me to the problem of digital coercion. Moments powerful enough to make me want to fight for the right to an analogue life - and convince meaningful numbers of people to join me in that fight.
The year was 2018. I was on my way to Albania. A country that, in my youth, was a hermit state led by Enver Hoxha. As a result of that mysteriousness, Albania had always been high on my list. And now that I was based in Vienna, which is at least on the same continent, I had finally planned the trip.
I subscribe to the idea that the journey matters, so instead of flying to Albania, I found a cheap flight1 to Bari in Italy. After a few hours there, I would catch the overnight ferry to Durres. Then, after several days exploring the country, I would fly out of Tirane.
But before I even got out of Bari Airport, I had an unfortunate incident on my hands. I’d been careless and distracted when disembarking the plane. As a result, I’d left my mobile phone in the seat pocket in front of me.
Either the device was buried so deep that the cleaners never found it, or somebody pocketed it - not that it would have been worth much. I don’t remember now, but it may even have been the Windows phone I’d bought in the Australian outback a few years earlier2.
Long story short, my smartphone was gone. Right at the start of my holiday.
But the world was a different place in 2018. Studiously printing all my bookings and tickets in paper form wasn’t yet dinosaur behaviour. It may even have been normal back then. I doubt I had any travel-related apps either. I definitely had a paper map with me, from the fabulous Freytag & Berndt map shop3 in Vienna. I wasn’t dependent on the phone in the way most people would be now.
So although it was annoying to have to spend money on a new phone at some point, this wasn’t a travel emergency for me. It didn’t cross my mind to worry about getting a replacement until I was back home. And that, I suddenly realised, is exactly how it should be.
This was enlightening moment number one. I remember thinking to myself that if I had had to spend my first day of holiday panicking my way to an electronics store, then I had an unhealthy dependence on the goddamn phone.
My holiday in Albania went just fine without the smartphone. Sure, there were one or two moments where I had to get out of the comfort zone that these devices keep us in. I was supposed to call some guy about my hire car on arrival in Durres, but solved that problem by approaching some counter at the terminal and asking if they would mind dialling him for me. Later in the trip, lacking a detailed map of Tirane, I actually asked people for directions. A little interaction that tech has stolen from us. And it turns out people don’t bite. It’s possible, even, that some of them can use a little interaction too.
That phoneless experience in Albania sowed a seed that would only germinate years later. There was no crisis yet, after all. It was a given that you could travel - and live - successfully without a smartphone. I had taken that choice and all was well.
Sure, I had a smartphone for everyday use, but drew the line at expensive roaming when I travelled4. I did not notice the coercion to own a (connected) smartphone lurking on the horizon.
Now, in our post-pandemic world, things look very different. We are flirting dangerously with the notion that you cannot step out of your house without a bundle of costly electronics on your person. What was a matter of lifestyle choice eight years ago is now teetering on the precipice of being non-optional, thanks to payment systems, compulsory apps, digital government, two-factor authentication and other sexy new features of modern life.
This fundamental change slipped in behind the clouds of a global pandemic. And man, it went fast. 2018 is not a long time ago. So, if the speed of the process teaches us anything, it’s that we need to start pushing back, like, yesterday. Before we do indeed tumble over the edge.
I live in Burgenland, Austria, where my business entity is registered. Although I only indulge in humble freelance writing, translation and tour-guiding, that registration is truly and Teutonically compulsory.
For some time now, there has been a big push to get business owners to use the Unternehmensservice Portal (USP), a digital one-stop-shop for the bureaucratic stuff that needs doing. I never had that much bureaucratic stuff in the first place, however, so it was never really on my radar.
Then, in early 2025, a letter arrived. It said there was a little local tax every business owner in Burgenland had to pay. How much? The letter told me in no uncertain terms that the official form-filling and calculation for this piffling amount would take place exclusively on the USP.
In old-school, analogue-friendly Austria, that was already a red flag. But it gets worse.
In a parallel development, which you’re no doubt experiencing wherever you are in the world, the national government is herding everyone towards a digital ID app.
You guessed correctly: logging into the USP was only going to fly with that app, which goes by the name of Austria ID in these here parts.
Even if I wanted to jump through those hoops, my oldish smartphone would not install the marvellous, secure, cybersafe, utopian, convenient digital ID app. So, all I had to do was go out and buy an appropriately up-to-date phone in order to pay this €12 local tax.
I didn’t see any offer from the local government to foot the bill for that new phone I was going to have to buy in order to pay them.
And I thought, “This is not utopian. This is dystopian. It is also absurd. They cannot force me to buy a new phone.”
And so I decided to fight.
I could write a lot about the fight, but it would involve a lot of long German words and laborious citations. Maybe I’ll do a separate post about that some time. But for now, let me give you the short version.
I emailed the local government, amazed them with the revelation that, no, I was not going to run out and buy a new phone for them, and insisted that this process must also be possible by post and paper.
When the lady responsible, whose name for now I will be kind enough not to mention, proved rather stubborn on this point, I took some expert advice and was referred to the relevant law. Which states, quite sensibly, that if electronic form submission isn’t possible then it can still be done offline. Which is both intuitive and obvious.
Yet my correspondent was evidently under instructions not to mention this aspect of the law, and rather to send me smartphone shopping. But I won this stupid, unnecessary fight in the end. We did the thing by post.
In 2026, I received a similar letter and had to have the same fight all over again. And again they backed down when I insisted5.
Would you have simply gone out and bought a new phone if you were in my position? Or would you consider the expectation absurd, nonsensical and unenforceable? I’d love your comments!
You may think this a hypothetical situation. But here’s the thing. Most people wouldn’t have had such an old phone in the first place. Most people would have had this app anyway, because convenience is seductive. And so they wouldn’t experience the digital coercion. The digital coercion would go unnoticed because they’ve unwittingly bought in already. They lost the fight before it even happened, if you like.
But just because we don’t notice something doesn’t mean it’s not there. I would argue that this is not a hypothetical fight for anyone. It’s just that most of us neither noticed it nor threw a punch.
My idea is that others will now join me in resisting on principle. Because even if your phone can handle that digital ID app and many more, that is not the point. It is unacceptable for your ownership of any particular device to be taken as a given to access essential services and fulfil citizen duties.
I couple of years ago I was walking around near the former Olympic stadium in Amsterdam. I fancied a stroopwafel and spied a petrol station up the road. They would surely have the sweet treat I was after. And they did!
What they did not have was a ready supply of change for the €10 note I handed over. The lady was befuddled and bebumbled. She gave me a withering look for not dinging a card or a phone like everyone else. Then she rummaged around in a dusty corner behind the till, scratching among old chocolate wrappers and receipts from 2013, until she finally located what must have been the last €5 note on the premises6.
“What fresh hell is this?” I thought. Here I was in a founding Eurozone country, trying to pay for something with Euros, and I was being treated as though I had proffered 19th-century Gulden. “Am I going nuts or is everyone else?”
I was already used to this sort of thing in London, and knew Scandinavia was getting dodgy for cash too. But I hadn’t realised the madness had landed so hard in the Netherlands as well. What is it with the lands of northern Europe? Why do they insist in measuring their worth in tech?
There’s a cashless cloud hanging over Amsterdam
Anyway, that was the night my protest was truly born. I vowed that if my cash wasn’t good enough for a business, then I would take my business elsewhere. So, later that evening, I walked out of a kebab shop the moment they shook their heads and said, ‘cards only’. And believe me, I was hungry!
Next day at Central Station, I was peckish once again. I tried to pick up some snacks for my Eurostar journey to London. The station has a small, busy version of the Albert Heijn supermarket. Self-service and cashless, it’s another fabulous display of technical proficiency and human irrelevance. Well, Albert had one less sale that day. Because some of us have principles.
London, and much of the United Kingdom, has been this way ever since the pandemic. Do you know how crazy it has become? I played a cricket match against an English team a few weeks ago, and nobody had a coin to toss before the start. But they knew this was a problem, so...wait for it...there is an app for that. I’m being serious here. A virtual coin-tossing app. I had no words.
But why won’t I just get with the programme and use my card? I do have one, after all. Fundamentally, I think it’s just weird to have perfectly good cash refused by a vendor. Digital payments are fine, but insisting on them? It makes me feel like we are being herded into a robot existence. Graphically and demonstrably so.
Okay, maybe that creepy feeling is just an aesthetic, nostalgic thing that doesn’t make for a good argument. Maybe the impending end to my international banknote collection is not a compelling case either. But there are plenty of other reasons we shouldn’t just allow ourselves to be herded into a cashless society.
For those struggling to make ends meet in these hard times, it’s indubitably easier to control and ‘feel’ your spending with cash. Cash cannot be cyber-attacked. It cannot be got at by online swindlers. It cannot be affected by power outages. Losing it will make the rich richer and hard-working, tip-dependent folks struggle more, as I already wrote here. And ultimately, when they phase out plastic cards in favour of payment apps, having no cash will mean...you can see where this is going already...compulsory smartphone ownership. I wrote about that here.
When I’m in London in a couple of weeks, then, I’ll be boycotting all cashless establishments. I hope you’ll join me, wherever you are in the world. And keep on sharing ideas of places to boycott and places to support - I really need a few more for London!
This was before I understood that cheap flights, and flying in general, are bad things. If I did the journey from Vienna to Albania now, it would be overland and ideally by public transport.
Since Brexit had made roaming with an EU phone extortionate, I have carried out my annual UK summer trip without phone data. Each year, I can feel that strategy being squeezed a little more.
As it happens, I now had a suitable phone and could have done the app thing. But I understood that many people still didn’t have a suitable phone and didn’t want one either. I understood that in a year or five years or whenever, I might once again be in that category. So this second fight happened purely as a matter of principle and solidarity. As will the third…
It had a significant tear in it, the darn thing. It was quite a while before I found anybody else willing to take it. An all-round change disaster.
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