https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-problem-with-easy-technology
What do you think of the article? Do you believe any of the concepts should be brought into humane technology discussion?
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Thank you! To quote the article by Tim Wu for the benefit of this compassionate forum:
“Instead of fewer difficult tasks (writing several long letters) we are left with a larger volume of small tasks (writing hundreds of e-mails). We have become plagued by a tyranny of tiny tasks, individually simple but collectively oppressive. And, when every task in life is easy, there remains just one profession left: multitasking.”
Yes life feels like dizzying multitasking too often, we’re overwhelmed and rushing in a blur of activity and struggle to have uninterrupted time to challenge ourselves.
“The risks of biological atrophy are even more important. Convenience technologies supposedly free us to focus on what matters, but sometimes the part that matters is what gets eliminated.”
Our atrophies have started long ago. Before the advent of the printing press humans were able to recall long tales and poems. The use of transportation and more recently of the internet has atrophied our muscles. We’ve witnessed a terrible decline in the quality of films and music. The list of what we’ve lost is as endless as time, and almost as long as the better-known list of all that we’ve gained.
I fear even the very existence of our lost talents has been forgotten. We fail to acknowledge the reversal of progress and the concept that progress goes both ways.
I have faith, as the author mentions, that convenience technologies can free us to focus on things that actually matter. For that to come to pass it is vital that we free ourselves of the shackles of the attention economy and of information overload.
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