If technology and invention were supposed to make our lives so easy --as I was told repeatedly through my early days of education -- why do we now have so much work to do? Why are we filling the time after sundown with work and with studies when we could be sleeping and resting and talking with our family and friends. I have some severe doubt regarding the direction my own life has taken with regard to my own reliance on advancing technologies....
I am well aware that these technologies have given us luxuries of safety and free time during the daylight hours that are not consumed with tasks of survival, but it seems that we have created the necessity of writing when there may have not been a need before the technology was available. The simple number of emails that I must answer each day is astounding to me -- and many of these emails are ridiculous in nature as they may be inquiries that can be easily determined with a little thought and consideration ro they are messages meant to entertain and distract from the monotony of the day --which wouldn't be if I weren't tied to that email application on my laptop computer....the cursed anchor. The joke used to be that the ball and chain was one's wife after marriage, but now it's the laptop that one's workplace so generously gave.....
I wonder if we have created technologies of economies which simply consume time.
Ease is never one-dimensional, is it? At some point (I'll try to put a finger the page if needed) in Kelly's What Technology Wants he uses the example of the automobile making travel easier. It was much easier to drive 100 miles than to cover that distance on foot, bicycle, or horse. But the automobile ushers in ease and *more.* Next there are all variety of mechanical operations one must understand. There are rules of the road. There are consequences. So, yes, technological innovation usually does introduce ease, but that is only the start of it--often it is the catalyst and initial justification.
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