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Many of the gains are small & taken for granted. Do you remember what banking was like twenty years ago? These days I might visit a branch five times a year, an
by ip26 7y ago
Many of the gains are small & taken for granted. Do you remember what banking was like twenty years ago? These days I might visit a branch five times a year, and everything is auto-pay, e-bill, remote deposit, and p2p payments. Many years I don't have to visit the DMV. I used to call stores to get their hours & check stock, now I can mostly do that online in half the time.
I will agree that around the house, aside from Roomba not much home labor has been saved. Everything has gotten more efficient, but cooking is still cooking, and the washing machine still can't fold. Power tools have become a lot cheaper & better, but in many cases the maintenance overhead is often not worth the labor saved.
- mntmoss 7y agoI would vouch for the last few decades seeing quality improvements: it's become very easy to purchase obscure goods online, to get frozen gluten-free dinners, find product reviews, learn about foreign countries, and other things where the process isn't always saving hours, but it is in some way putting more guarantees on the experience and hence adding a certain dimension of freedom. At the same time it's become apparent that fewer hours of labor and more benefits with a pay cut is desirable for many, and we're in a "superstar" economy that discourages such. The oft-heard complaint is that we can't enjoy these technological wonders since we have no time.