When it became possible, in the early ’80s, to migrate from writing on a typewriter to word processing, it was a revelation. Prior to that, if correcting a mistake carried a line over to the next page, you retyped the whole thing! I can’t believe that’s how we worked.
I was not an early cell phone adopter, but before long it made business and social arrangements unavoidably more convenient. In the past, if you were late and needed to let someone know, you had to find a pay phone, dig around for the right change, find the number of the place you expected them to be, and hope the line wasn’t busy and the person answering could find your friend. Now, a quick text and presto. Thumbs up emoji.
In less than 50 years, how we do nearly everything has been transformed. For many it’s made the world massively more convenient. Yet, as deeply appreciative as I’ve been for the devices that have vastly changed how we work and play, it has begun to feel that the convenience has introduced a lot of inconvenience. It’s not just the challenge of navigating the galloping complexity of the digital landscape or the many inconveniences that come from the need to install “upgrades” that add new features you never needed and can’t figure out how to use.
Something deeper is at play that goes beyond curmudgeonly gripes.
