Is technology becoming a burden?
Technology was said to make life easier. Yet until recently you had to own several electronic gadgets to make your daily life seem simpler. Every new gadget that comes out claims to bring aspects of your life together and make daily chores less time consuming.
Each day I check several RSS feeds, 4 separate email accounts, turn on several pieces of equipment at work, and make sure my cell phone is fully charged for the day, and I know there are people out there who have multiple cellphones, 2 or 3 computers at the work place or home, and several other gadgets to maintain. Which begs the question, is technology becoming more of a burden on our daily life?
More and more people are relying on the internet, several workstations, cell phones, and other gadgets to get through their work day, and all of these items require some sort of upkeep. Our lives seem to be becoming more dependent on our ipods and laptops and we are allowing this to be the norm. All of these objects require time and money to maintain, things that we are sometimes short on, and yet only a few companies are trying to combine these gadgets into one super gadget that is capable of multiple tasks within a single unit.
A great example of this is the iPhone(aff), which combines the ipod, with a phone, and also has internet connectivity. This kind of device allows people to have one device that can perform the tasks of several others. There are other devices such as this but this one has really taken technology to the next step.
So my question to you is this; do you feel that technology is becoming more of a burden on your daily life? Or do you think that it makes your life easier?
October 29th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Great question – lots of stuff to discuss here.
I would argue that technology is an asset to everyone. Technology is not limited to gadgets, but practically everything we’ve created – from the wheel to alcohol to the printed word. All pretty important stuff that definitely makes my life easier/better.
That said, the way that electronic technology is evolving is forcing us to be more available, which can certainly be a burden. But it’s all how you decide to handle things. You can’t let the job work you…
October 29th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I like to think that time management is the key to finding the balance. When you realize that the small things (charging phones / laptop batteries) only take a minute or 2, then you can stop worrying about them and get on with whatever you’re doing.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
The primary benefit of technology to be “enabling”. Doing things better, faster, more efficiently are all good things. Having 400 emails a day on a “crackberry” is insane.
The trick is to garner the benefits of the tools without becoming owned by them, or addicted to them.
In this case less is surely more. If you can’t walk away from technology for a few days, it might be time to think about whether it’s a help or a problem.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
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March 2nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
it’s great to see that our vehicles are starting to integrate outside items such as voice activated mp3 control, mp3 jacks for ipods, built in GPS, built in speaker phone, and a bunch of other features. still these are just more things that someone has to balance while trying to concentrate on driving.