I am under attack. My life has been taken over by apps. Whether I am entering my home, calling an elevator, banking, buying, or using products and services; everything is “conveniently” handled through apps.

The convenience being that of the app provider, not me, in most cases. The apps want to know where I am at all times. I, however, prefer to keep my travels private and allow them location information only when I am using them. When I do so, they throw a fit and threaten me with malfunction.

Not only are they interested in my whereabouts, many of them want to use my microphone and my camera. Again, if I deny them even a part of what they ask of me, they make my life hell by malfunctioning at critical times.

Complaining is useless. There are no humans around to complain to. Even the chatbots are busy. No-one cares.

I have been fighting to get into my building and answer my intercom for 3 weeks now thanks to a brilliant invention called KONE Residential Flow. In theory, the KONE Flow application should make my life easy. In practice, the app is threatening my sanity.

I have been forced to serve the app, not vice versa. This is a new version of the Handmaid’s Tale. I am forced into digital servitude, because that is the norm in our digital society. Slowly the burdens of the app providers are rolled over onto us in the name of convenience and groundbreaking technology.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not hiding in historic forests, growing moss and decrying all things digital.

I love my Kindle app. I don’t go anywhere without it. The app actually works and Amazon seems to understand that it needs to be kept simple.

I have even learned to like my post office app. It means that there are fewer people around to answer my questions, but most of my former post office contacts have been reduced to mindless chatbots anyway.

I still prefer doing my banking the old-fashioned way, i.e. online, but I can appreciate the convenience of a banking app. Not to mention some other handy apps; a special shoutout goes to the Google wifi app that walked me through my Google mesh wifi set- up seamlessly.

I am not hankering back to the olden, golden days even though they did have a lot going for them in terms of charm. The inhabitants of these lovely buildings never had to fight KONE Flow to get into their homes.

This app frenzy really has to stop. Everyone and their grandmother is grinding them out indiscriminately.

Our KONE Flow experience is worth a blog, because it embodies everything that is wrong with this trend. A trend that crosses into harassment and digital discrimination all too easily.

When we bought our new apartment, my partner in life and I were treated to a KONE Flow video where doors opened magically as you neared your building, elevators were called to the right floor as you opened your door, and the intercom worked faultlessly with video pics of your visitors. All you needed was a smartphone and an app.

My dear partner in life is of the opinion that a smart phone is a phone that doesn’t bother you with anything other than phone calls and occasional messages. It is safe to say that he is not an “app” man.

The builders´ representatives were happy to assure us that everything would work without the KONE Flow app too. Needless to say, the reality looks very different.

Nothing flows: doors don’t open automatically. Not for me, not for anyone, however smart the person and the phone is. This is because the builder didn’t buy this particular feature as part of the KONE Flow package. So why show it on the video? Because “Kone had no other video of the system”.

A gem of an explanation. One that seems to keep cropping up wherever you go. Your hotel rooms don’t look like anything in the picture “because our pictures are not of specific rooms”, your home doesn’t look anything like what you were buying “because our brochure pictures are just illustrative”.

Finland is full of councils and ombudsmen, who will diligently help you if your scarf is not of promised quality; but when you buy a home, you are on your own once you become a shareholder (most of our housing associations are in the form of limited liability companies) . You are not a consumer anymore.

If your housing association doesn’t care for your concerns, you can take the matter to court. In practice, you are better off using the tens and hundreds of thousands that a court case will cost you on something more productive – anger control therapy comes to mind. Nothing sensible has come out of these court cases. A lottery has more certainty.

So our doors won’t open magically, who cares. But when deliveries start arriving, and there is no way to open the building door, because the intercom doesn’t work without a a relatively new smartphone and the KONE Flow app; and the app doesn’t work without free access to your location, microphone and camera; and your partner in life is blaming everyone, including yours truly, for this travesty – it’s time to run for your life.

In a building full of young digital natives, few will understand my partner in life’s view. Their sentiment is more along the line: Get a smartphone and learn to use it. Why worry about privacy, some things you just can’t control.

Unfortunately, I just reread George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 on my beloved Kindle. I am not giving up the fight for control over my own life.

No app is going to beat me or my dear partner in life into submission. Our movements are our own, our choice of phone is our own; neither should be monitored or decided by Kone or anyone else.

Fighting the good fight is tiring. We decided to flee the scene of these never-ending problems to our little summer hideaway in the lovely city of Tammisaari, a place where everything flows sedately on its own – no machines (Kone in Finnish) needed.

Not only is our little hideaway good for our souls, it also proves our point. Life doesn’t have to be so complicated. Our summer abode sports an intercom system that actually works. Visitors push one button downstairs, you push another upstairs, and you’re done; irrespective of whether your mobile works, your wifi works, your camera works or your location is known to all and sundry.

To whom it may concern: Please give me fewer apps and chatbots, more simple systems that work and real live people to talk to. Please, please, please…