Gaby Hinsliff makes a good case for preserving “human connection” in our public lives (The people have spoken – and they want to speak to real live humans, not a rail ticket self-service app, 28 July). Along with the loss of human faces, rapid automation also results, increasingly, in a loss of humanity – those codes of behaviour that acknowledge the sensitivities and needs of those with whom we interact.
As we rush to treat all human interaction as transactional, in a business sense, ironically the human dimension that commercialism mistreats becomes a factor that it uses to gain a market advantage, for there has never been a time when customer service and feedback has been more in demand.
