Power has its privileges, but apps can level the playing field—unless of course, they’re designed to entitle the entitled.
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One might legitimately ask, is this the sort of thing that bright people with access to capital who can make a difference with code should be creating?
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In a classic scene from the movie Goodfellas, the young mobster Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) brings his date to a music club where the manager whisks them through the kitchen and sits them down in front of the stage at a table that wasn’t there moments before. Henry, of course, is a big shot, as well as a big tipper. The Mafia’s influence may have waned, but the rich and powerful still get the best seats, either by greasing palms or paying extra. Now, in a nod to the in crowd’s obsession with dining at the hottest spots in town, tech startup ReservationHop, founded by Brian Mayer, scoops up reservations at in-demand restaurants and allows users to snag them up to four hours in advance—for a price.
Mayer may have thought he was creating just another life-enhancing, make-things-easier app along the lines of SeamlessWeb or Peapod, and he was shocked by the firestorm on Twitter that inspired a rant by TechCrunch‘s Josh Constine and gave birth to the hashtag #JerkTech. Mat Honan (@mat) called the app “irresponsible and sleazy” and lamented that it’s “exactly what people hate about startups sucking the life out of San Francisco.” And Selena Larson (@selenalarson) wondered if startups would eventually “start squatting in emergency rooms and let people pay to get to the front of the line.”
The visceral hatred heaped on ReservationHop focuses on its brazen and shameless enablement of exclusion, which flies in the face of the entire app model.
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The outrage seems to be less about the inevitable fact that money talks and more about the gross misallocation of mental and technical resources. One can say that an app such as ReservationHop is harmless—it doesn’t kill or maim or insult anyone. But one might also legitimately ask, is this the sort of thing that bright people with access to capital who can make a difference with code should be creating? Apps that enable instantaneous mass communication have, unintentionally, helped foment and publicize revolutions. Others let people text money to charities, support causes by clicking, or even provide clean water to children in developing countries simply by not using one’s phone. Even portal services such as Ticketmaster and Priceline, which aggregate access to offerings with a scarcity factor feel somewhat egalitarian and have the flavor of helping the little guy. The visceral hatred heaped on ReservationHop focuses on its brazen and shameless enablement of exclusion, which flies in the face of the entire app model—a universe of free or virtually free tools that provide access to all sorts of nifty products, services, and entertainment—for anyone who has the now ubiquitous mobile phone.
Would you use ReservationHop to buy a spot at a hot new restaurant?
Would you reject it on principle?
Or is it too unimportant a thing to get exercised about?
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Interestingly, the photo above shows, according to the photographer, “an amazingly expensive restaurant.” He also includes a note: “Sadly it was full, but I’ll be back. What a view!”
Photo—Will/Flickr