What do you mean by impossible in this case? Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.

EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.

I'm reading this discussion, and allow me to give you my two cents. It's not a matter of being impossible, but rather how much the rest of society is willing to pay to maintain such infrastructure (either through higher taxes when dealing with the government, or through more expensive goods/services when dealing with corporations, since companies need to maintain old infrastructure that most people don't use).

For example, I read that Switzerland voted to guarantee the use of physical cash, even enshrining it in the constitution, which clearly points toward preserving older infrastructure. However, if you have cash but no one accepts it, it becomes useless. So it would probably require more—something like requiring businesses and the government to accept that form of payment.

As many things in life, not impossible: but is society willing to pay for that?

This cuts both ways. Since smartphones are becoming such an essential necessity, we should never ever remove the possibility to adjust these devices for our own requirements

Right, and builders now build homes with Ring cameras pre-installed. Surveillance chills aside it's about building rent-seeking into every corner of the economy, and that's a top-down goal of modern capitalism. Requiring a smart-phone to park is just part of it, and it goes back to the parent comment that there is something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.

To me it proves that Google's steps to lock down phones isn't really about security. To them the scams that happen are acceptable losses. The scammed will still use Android and still click on ads and still let themselves be tracked and marketed to as before. But if Google can use the excuse of security to edge out alternative apps and app stores they will spend plenty of money and time to do it.

This isn't security, it's sealing a hole in the sales funnel.

It's kinda dumb that you can't tap your card. At least they have a phone option, but really, why no CC?

>how to pay with the app.

Or by phone.

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