Mandatory email and phones

Meredith on de facto obligatory tech

Meredith tweets:

There is no legal requirement to have an email address, nor is there a requirement to have a cell phone or use certain apps. But our government and far too many corporations behave as though this is the case.

It's a tremendous problem.

There's quite a few of these bug bears:

• presumption that you have to have a smart phone
• presumption that you have to have a mobile phone number
• presumption that a mobile phone number can receive SMSes
• presumption that obtaining the number is permission to send SMSes
• presumption that you have an email address
• presumption that email is subject to quality of service guarantees like the postal service, rather than algorithmic spam blocking
• legal requirement that companies have an email address
• presumption that you have to use particular software, particularly Windows/MacOS and MS Office and the associated file formats

There will be a few others of these. But we really need to be able to articulate why this kind of creeping formalisation and presumptuousness is bad.

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