How does technology improve your quality of life? In what ways does it detract from it?
I think it's safe to say that, in our modern world, everyone has an individual and complex relationship with technology. We're all experiencing the growing pains of uncharted territory, as computers, phones, and the internet continually revolutionize experiences from the everyday to the extraordinary. Unfortunately, it can often feel like every step forward also brings regressions, and what's good for some is not always good for others.
I'm interested in hearing about the ways that technology works for you in your life, both the good and the bad. Some guiding questions:
- What's better in your life because of technology? What is worse?
- How does it impact your career, hobbies, and interpersonal relationships?
- Are there tradeoffs you have to make for incorporating or ignoring tech for certain tasks or aspects?
- Are there areas in which you hope for the increased presence of technology?
- Are there areas where you actively keep tech out?
- Do you think that the problems created for us by technology are design flaws in the tech itself, or are they merely a mirror for pre-existing issues at the human level?
I know "technology" as a term is very broad, but I've intentionally left it that way because I want people to self-select the things most important to them, whether that's their computer, the internet, a phone, an online platform, an assistive tech device, etc. Also, don't feel obligated to list out every piece of tech, as it's gotten so prevalent to be almost omnipresent. Instead, just focus on the things that have a significant impact on your day to day life.
One app I think has made my life easier than all the others. Google maps. Just plug in where you want to go, and it takes you there. It'll even help you navigate around traffic or tell you if the store will be closed by the time you get there. It has saved countless hours listening to the radio for traffic updates, reading maps, and asking people for directions.
Sometimes it feels like my life is almost entirely online — my job is remote, my partner and I are long distance, and because I'm chronically ill I find it much easier (less tiring) to socialize online rather than in person. Without my computer and phone I'd be very isolated — while I recognize that I should balance things somewhat I also think that people who say "millennials" are antisocial because of technology are missing a lot.
In terms of specific tech, there's a lot I could talk about, so to narrow things down I'll focus on fairly recent things that have helped with my health. I started using a medication tracking app (Medisafe) a couple weeks ago, and it's been super helpful. I'm not very comfortable with how they might use my info, however, so I've not made an account yet.
I also fairly recently bought an eye tracker (Tobii) to help with repetitive stress injuries. It's made for gaming and it isn't super accurate, at least not enough for work, so I use some software and head tracking to turn it into something intuitive and useable. With this system along with foot pedals, voice commands, and speech recognition, I can keep working during a flare and try to give myself a chance to heal. "Look ma, no hands!"
Edit: oh, I guess you asked about the bad. It's telling that I use my assistive tech to mitigate injuries caused by using tech.
On the positive side, it made me available to my loved ones 24/7.
On the negative side, it made me available to my loved ones 24/7.
On the positive side, technology has made us more connected and given us a lot more information.
I can video conference my relatives, I can find fun things to do, fun places to go, fun people to do them with, fun things to listen too, I can learn to fix anything or research any topic of interest.
On the negative side, technology has made us more connected and given us a lot more information.
My work expects me to respond to emails and take web conference calls at all sorts of odd hours, co-workers are far to liberal with cc'ing me on irrelevant emails or adding me to irrelevant meetings, I can't seem to decide if I want to watch a movie or surf the net so I usually end up trying to do both, plus I am not sure social media is entirely good for me.
In general, I find it helpful to disconnect and go camping, skiing, golfing, riding, swimming, exercising.... but I probably don't do that anywhere nearly enough.
I think this is huge. Technology has blurred a lot of the divisions between one's "home self" and "work self" to the point that they can become indistinguishable. This isn't necessarily a bad thing on its own, but it absolutely can be if mixed with a secondary pressure like an overzealous work ethic or pressures to perform. I'm over a decade into my career and I am just now getting to a place where I am able to set reasonable rules for myself about taking work home and not working on weekends.
I think a tangential point is also that technology allows us to work more efficiently, so our jobs not only expand, but compress. Instead of the increased efficiency creating a more leisurely pace (because I can get the same amount of work done in less time), it instead simply increases the pace we're expected to keep up with, because we can now get more done in the same amount of time. Technology has been one of the major forces that has pushed my career to hop on the path of never-ending employee-centered feature creep, where we are expected to do more and more with each passing year. It is to the point where I operate at maximum efficiency nearly every minute of every day, and it's exhausting.
I had a casual conversation with a coworker this morning. Lasted about 10 minutes. Caught up on what was going on with her kids and her home renovation projects. I spent the entire time feeling guilty and anxious that I wasn't getting stuff done, despite the fact that a casual work conversation is not only a perfectly normal thing to have but something that should actually be encouraged to some extent as a way of promoting kinship and morale within teams. Operating at or past capacity on a daily basis is not a healthy way to live, and I feel like technology helped us get there. It's one of the roots of our modern problem of "overworking."
I don't think you'll get too many Luddite answers from this crowd. I know a lot of us work in developing technology, after all.
I rather hate that people blame their problems on technology. Technology is what is making our quality of life so great. The things people blame on technology are usually either their own fault or society's. For example, imagine if someone complains about spending too much time on Facebook. Does having a phone or computer cause it? No, their addiction is what causes it; in other words, they use technology the same way a drug addict would use a needle to inject heroine.
I disagree with this. If Facebook just existed, sure, but Facebook is designed to be addictive. That’s a central strategy for its monitezation.
Technology in a void is neither bad nor good but people can design things that encourage harmful usage of it, like Facebook.
Both you and @emdash misunderstand my arguement. The element that makes Facebook addictive is not it's technology, it's the content. It's the social engineering, not the computer engineering. Frankly, it's a huge mistake to call Facebook a technology company. Technology is not what they sell. Media is what they sell.
To address @emdash's concern specifically, I am in no way saying these companies are not evil for taking these actions. I am merely stating that the technology they are using is not fundamentally evil.
First of all: technology is made by people. Second of all: the social engineering would be impossible without technology. But I see what you’re saying an agree with it as all technology has the potential for good and for evil. I just feel like it’s being used more for evil than for good in a lot of cases though.
This is a naive interpretation. You're basically saying that casinos & loan sharks can be absolved of their predatory practices because it's the user's fault. It's not nearly that simple. These organisations engage in dark tactics & exploitative strategies that encourages the user to act for short term gain at the expense of long term health.
So yes, Apple shares some blame for make their devices so addictive. Google shares some blame due to their tendencies to hyper-target consumers with ads. King shares blame for making Candy Crush rewarding to play. Facebook shares blame for the results of the 2016 elections.
Don't absolve big tech of their crimes. They have many.
I'm a software developer and I hold a broadly negative view on modern tech. The frustrating thing is that is has the potential to be great; look at automation for example, removing the need for a large swath of the population to toil should be an amazing accomplishment but instead it's a source of fear and anxiety, it's obvious that under capitalist economies the people automated away are not going to be the ones sharing in the newfound wealth. Don't even get me started on mass surveillance, or the war industry endlessly creating more efficient ways to murder people, or the data-driven psychological manipulation of adtech. You say that this is not a feature of the tech itself, but all tech is created for a reason and most of those reasons aren't good.
Honestly your example of automation is a perfect one to demonstrate my view. People aren't anxious about automation because the machines are evil. They are worried machines will take their jobs because we live in a society that requires them to work in order to survive. In the meanwhile, investing in automation causes products to be able to be made with less expense, which usually results in lower prices for those goods, which is a net gain for society.
I am completely willing to admit that technology has opened new avenues for people to take advantage of others, but that's a social issue. Framing it as an issue with technology is a waste of time at best and a smokescreen to allow the bad actors to get away with their plans at worst. Even if technology is designed specifically to do evil things, there is nothing preventing us from taking that technology and using it in constructive or helpful ways.
A thing I love about technology is the accessibility of answers to my questions. What effect does quack grass have on my soil? What's the best cheesecake recipe? How do you repair a hole in the middle of jersey fabric? What does the right mix of water to cement look like?
So easy. You'd have had to have so many reference books before! I love being able to know something and learn something at a moment's notice.
The cons of technology is mainly social media for me - I think it has loosened my tight friendships a little. It makes it a lot easier to stay friendly acquaintances with people, but it's easy to not spend much effort on maintaining your friendships because you generally know what's going on with your friends without ever ACTUALLY contacting them.
The other major con for me is comparison to people whose standard I cannot hope to achieve. I spend a lot of time comparing my looks to people who are making a living by being good-looking, my house to people's who make a living by decorating, my cooking to people who are professional chefs, my art to people who are insanely talented, my personality to people who are professionally charming.
I love instagram and pinterest and blogs and such, they're so inspiring, but also so demoralizing sometimes!
This is a really valuable point. There's the phrase "don't compare your behind-the-scenes with someone else's highlight reel", but social media lets us take it a step further and aggregate highlight reels of absolute standouts for each and every single trait and skill.
I feel like it's often way too much of a distraction. Sometimes if I end up stalled in a project I'm working on I end up shifting over to my browser, opening my standard set of tabs, and losing a few minutes checking things. Feel like that kind of distractability follows me outside technology though. Sometimes I just need to shut everything off and silently exist for a little bit.
Alternatively, I feel like it's made me way more productive since I'm able to find and organize thoughts easier than ever before.