The Myth of Modern Convenience: How Technology Makes Life Harder(part 1)

(1) E-Mail:
Yeah, sure it’s nice to be able to maintain contact with people on the other side of the world without having to wait ages for a response to the handwritten letter you sent ages ago. But upon reflection, for every email you get from someone whose life is of any interest to you, you’ll likely receive several from a range of people whose aren’t. It’s also instructive to consider what life might be like with a bit of breathing room between instructions from your boss, briefs from clients, endless queries from your colleagues and the weekly family digest from your well-meaning mother in law. And let’s not forget the spam: the offers of easy sex and untold fortunes that one must wade through on a near daily basis. Every day, millions of people around the world open their inboxes and sigh quietly to themselves.

(2)Cell Phones:
Is there anything more annoying than when someone interrupts your conversation to pick up their cell? Wait, yes there is: someone cuts you off in traffic while failing to indicate and you look up to see them happily chatting away on their phone, oblivious to your furious honking. Or maybe it’s the fantastically irritating ring tone that your colleague recently installed, the one you have heard so many times that it’s begun to echo in your dreams. Remember what it was like to be out of contact, to leave the house and know that you were beyond the reach of any unwanted intrusions. Those days are over. Smart phones are additionally taxing for some, as they allow one to work from beyond the desk. Now you can sift through those emails (see previous slide) while you’re on your lunch break as well. Great.

(3)Television:
The tube: breeding goggle-eyed fatties and mindless automatons the world over. Need a (typically terrible) opinion? Turn on the tube. Want a machine to think on your behalf, to act as an artificial imagination and surrogate mind? Turn on the tube. Need a fix of gratuitous violence and kitsch, scripted romance? It’s all about the Tube.
TV serves as the principle conduit (along with the Internet) of the unquantifiable junk culture that pervades modern life, the platform from which innumerable morons can preach their message of consumerism, brainwashing the masses into believing that a better body or a faster car might fill that widening hole in their souls. Even worse, when people summon up the gumption to quit the couch, leave their homes and go out into society, it’s all-too-often only to drive to their local mall and sit down in front of another, bigger screen. It boggles the mind.

(4)Cars:
You might think that your car is indispensable. You may point to the fact that your office is situated 25km away from your home, and that you need it to drop your kids at school in the morning. I would ask you to remember that were it not for cars, your life would be far more localised. You might even develop a sense of community, encountering your neighbours each day as you stroll leisurely to the local market for supplies. No more traffic, no more taxis winging along like loosely guided missiles, no more smog, noise, road deaths and congestion. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

(5)Gaming:
If you spent the day digging through ancient tombs in search of arcane artefacts and scrolls of ancient learning, chances are you did it all on your couch at home. If you’ve hoisted the world cup above your head, or won the league trophy with games to spare, you probably had your feet up all the while. Yes, that’s right; you were probably playing a computer game, burning through the precious hours of your life achieving simulated success in a simulated world, looking up periodically in the vain hope that someone might be on hand to witness your dragon slaying prowess, or footballing glory – to no avail. Nobody cares. There was a time when playing games meant sunshine, exercise and society. No more. The most you can hope for is the chance to gyrate atop a pressure pad, while an avatar mimics your movements on a screen. Sad.

courtsey:MSN news and getty image