[ToucanLoucan]

The big differentiator for me is "Does this use of technology solve a problem?" I do have a smartphone, FWIW, but it's a tool. And granted, one of it's uses is to kill spare minutes while I'm waiting for someone in a car, or riding public transport somewhere, but that is a choice. I am consciously choosing to partake in social media as a distraction because I have nothing else going on.

In response to your examples here:

> Im not going to live in an apartment that requires a smartphone to get into the door.

110% agreed. I think some kind of smart lock or maybe an RFID thing is just a door lock that is far more error-prone than it needs to be. No reason for it.

> If parking somewhere requires an app

These I can like. The problem is you inevitably run into the problem you always run into: a given app provider is almost certainly not your local municipality, and you have no idea which provider a given area will have chosen to accomplish this. If this could be standardized into one provider, operating as a utility, that simply works everywhere in the United States, that would be fucking brilliant. Just pull up to any public owned lot or stall, scan a QR code, select how long you're parking, and be auto-billed according to pre-set preferences.

But of course that's not the real experience. You have to download a new app for any given place, set it up with an account, another password you're almost certainly going to forget, give yet another nameless corporation your personal details and payment information and fuck knows how they're going to store them, and repeat this process wholesale the next time you have to park somewhere else. That's maddeningly stupid.

> eating at a restaurant requires a QR code

Perhaps controversial, I think this is okay. Especially if it's the type of restaurant where the menu frequently changes, I think this is honestly a good move. It saves a bunch of paper from being thrown out constantly and gives the staff one less thing to need to juggle as they seat patrons. And QR scanning and opening a web-link is essentially built-in functionality to any smart phone made in the last 5 years or so.

Now, if you scan a link and you need to download a fucking app... fuck that. Hard fuck that.

[mrweasel]

The issue with the QR codes at restaurants, for me, is that they force you to pull out your phone in a setting where you'd want people to put it away. Even been to dinner with people who are on their phone most of the time? Don't give people an excuse to pull out their phone, many are addicted and won't be able to put it away again and enjoy their meal and their company.

The parking I agree with, that solves a problem and genuinely makes our lives easier, but it should never be the only option for paying for parking.

[bluGill]

My phone doesn't have the space that a paper menu does. If I know what I want the QR menu works well, but if I'm trying to decide a menu works much better for comparing the options.