Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Efficiency

No, people, email does not make life 'easier'; that we can instantly communicate with anyone anywhere does not make life easier overall.

No technological fix will permanently make life easier - this is because life is a competitive game..Any invention which increases our productivity (letting us do what we could do in eight hours in two) will only raise the expectations of us, and we will still work 8, but accomplish much more perhaps. Anybody who tries to achieve the same number of things in two will be destroyed by those willing to work as long or longer than before.

5 comments:

Mermaid Melanie said...

well, yikes!

"she canna take anymore cap'n. we just dun have the powah!"

:giggles:

Eastcoastdweller said...

Leave it to lovely Melanie to encapsulate this whole concept with one witty phrase!

Our warp drives are indeed doomed to burn out in time as the biological organism attempts in vain to keep up with new technology.

Lance Abel said...

heya melanie. is that a star wars quote? i'm not really sure i understand it properly.


ec-i'm not so sure that we should still be making distinctions between human biology and technologies today, but i'm pretty sure we won't be in a hundred years when we're stuffed with implants, or using techniques like germ line therapy to permanently change genes on demand etc etc.

using this vocab, one could only say that either human biology will keep up with
technology (be enhanced by technology in some way), or that technology is keeping up with itself.
what i'm particularly interested in is whether or not people would report life to be easier (or if we could measure their stress etc over time) with or without certain technologies, although i don't dream of "freezing progress".

Mermaid Melanie said...

hey lance. you are toooo young. dont you know anything about star trek? :ask:

Lance Abel said...

i never liked star trek. i think its like fetishes...you had to like it when you were young, or you never will!?