15 ms·

Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster

160 points by Gigamouse 3y ago

kseifried 3y ago
I’m going to suggest people try washing their clothes by hand for one week and see how they feel about the technology convenience versus speed argument.
- TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
  Heh. Only two comments here so far, mine and yours, both making an identical point.
  - schneems 3y ago
    Two posts about washing machines, one Greg LeMond quote. And my post about washing machines with a Greg LeMond quote.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  I agree with your point, but a washing machine does make things faster: it takes maybe five minutes total for me to wash and dry my clothes with a machine, while it would take at least ten times as long to do it by hand. That's faster and more convenient.
  - schneems 3y ago
    I mentioned in another comment about this. While it’s faster and more convenient, that convenience might not necessarily convert into more joy or ease in your life.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      If someone gets more free time and chooses not to convert it into joy or ease, then that's up to the person, not whatever object or action saved the time.
      - schneems 3y ago
        I recommend the paper: Do Artifacts Have Politics. You can find it for free online if you search the title. It’s a classic HCI paper. Even if you disagree with everything I write, it’s worth reading. The paper asks the question (that you asserted). Essentially: divorced from creator or user intent, can an artifact (or technology) influence how it is used (its politics)? They make very compelling arguments that, yes, the mere existence of a technology (regardless of how people chose to use it) shapes and influences us. So while you might be technically correct, that it’s up to the individual: the larger system (and by extension the technology) does in fact influence us. It’s like the saying that the law applies equally because it prohibits both paupers and princes from stealing bread. It’s technically true, but it (intentionally, to prove a point) misses the point: that the system is set up so no prince would need to steal bread. In Code 2.0 (Laurence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons) makes a point to say that a variety of things influence our behavior: markets, norms, laws, and architecture. New technology falls under “architecture” in this categorization. Technology will exert itself on your behavior and give you new choices, but those choices cannot be divorced from the other legs: laws, norms, and markets.
    - QuercusMax 3y ago
      It also means that's it's much more feasible to own and wash large quantities of clothing. If I have to hand-wash every single piece of clothing, I may think much harder about whether I want to buy more items, and how much I will re-wear before washing. In the past clothing was very expensive and people didn't own many outfits unless they were extremely rich. Advances in technology have both changed our access to clothing and also its maintenance.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    But what if the act of manually washing your clothes was actually better for you (in terms of mental/physical health) than the activities you do instead while the machine's running? Not to mention the negative externalities involved in the manufacture, running and disposal of the machines involved.
- ryeights 3y ago
  This comment misses the point of the article. I.e., the monotony once required in hand-washing clothes (say by a housewife) has not been converted into free time, but rather converted into a different form of monotony (parents earning dual incomes)
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Really? The standard of living is so much higher now I cannot imagine how these two situations are equivalent. You can live the old single income lifestyle if you so desire.
    - spiderice 3y ago
      Not really. Sure, you can survive with a single income. But you often can’t own two cars, a house, and a cabin in the mountains, and raise 3+ kids with a single income. like you use to be able to do. Further, nobody has much free time today, despite technology doing most of the things that we used to spend our time on. Instead of technology giving everyone free time, everyone just had to work more in order to get the same lifestyle. Edit: though yes, quality of life is better in many ways.
      - wilg 3y ago
        Prove it!
      - em500 3y ago
        Across the US population, people spend 3.5 hours per day on work and 5.2 hours on leisure and sports[1]. Remember that a substantial part of the population does not work much (children, students, retirees, unemployed), so it's untrue that nobody has much free time today. Even the full-time employed spend on average 3.27 hours per day on leisure and sports on weekdays and 5.94 hours per day on weekends and holidays[2]. Checking the same survey from 20 years ago[3], average work has decreased a bit (was 3.69 hours per day) and average leisure and sports increased a bit (was 5.11 hours per day). [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11B.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11B.htm [3] https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2003.pdf https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2003.pdf
- W0lfEagle 3y ago
  My guess is that it would probably feel quite cathartic to unplug from all those digital distractions and just use your hands on a physical task for a while for many people not used to doing things like this. If however your washing machine breaks and you need to wash by hand AND do all the other hundreds of tasks filling up your time it will probably feel like a massive waste of time.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    When people washed clothes by hand they had far fewer items of clothing.
    - whywhywouldyou 3y ago
      So not only do you gain a meditative and rewarding practice of washing something by hand, it sounds like it incentivizes you to cut down on frivolous spending on clothing as well.
    - thsksbd 3y ago
      No, what they did is wear the same clothes a couple more days. Just because I have a fancy suit doesn't mean I wear it -> get it dirty. They also had fewer clothes because they weren't mass produced.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I've done it, people still do it, it's fine. Takes a little extra time, but that's it.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  Then they're all going in the tub with cold water and Woollite. Wringing each and finding somewhere to dry them is a pain. Honestly, I half do this already because half of my clothes are dry cleaning optional but cold water mechanical wash compatible while being dryer incompatible.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  If you go outside your comfort zone and talk to people it isn't too hard to find people that grew up in 19th century like lives. Ive met several, including my wife. One professor I knew never took his tenure seriously. He was always out doing fun things. When I asked him why he never seemed worried about it he answered: "why would I be worried? If they don't give me tenure I'll get back to go back to <home country> and become a shepherd again!" He got his tenure. Turns out he was very productive compared to his pampered colleagues.
- manicennui 3y ago
  The fact that some technology does in fact make life easier does not mean that it all does.
TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
Depends on the technology. The washing machine is unambiguously a labour-saving device.
- c-linkage 3y ago
  The washing machine is a labor shifting device. Instead of a person washing their own clothes, an entire electrification infrastructure must be built, operated, and maintained. A true labor saving invention would be clothing that stays clean without requiring washing.
- peterbell_nyc 3y ago
  It is, and that misses the point. Lets assume hand washing is an hour and contact time for washer dryer is 10 minutes. We have absolutely saved 50 minutes of labor. Unfortunately we all tend to fill that time up with extra things. Maybe we got a bigger house and have a lawn to mow. Maybe we're a two income household where the person doing the washing is also working, maybe we're checking email. The point is that the majority of people make the choice not to leverage the time saved in additional pursuits but to cram more things into their week. I certainly personally feel a little more frazzled than I believe I did at a time when the Internet was only accessible at big corporations and universities and when phones were (for most people) connected to wires in their houses and the only thing a watch could do was tell time and set alarms. This is not (at least for me) a criticism of technology or innovation. I happen to be unreasonably obsessed with both. It does raise the traditional question of "what is a good life" and how can we be thoughtful about how we engage with technology to ensure that we replace drudgery with joy - not just more tasks, things and obligations.
  - mfuzzey 3y ago
    As you say yourself people make the CHOICE to ... Before washing machines they didn't really have any choice but to wash their own clothes (except for a few very rich that had servants to do it). The same is true of many things - a huge proportion of the population used to be involved in subsistence activities just to grow food, and raise animals for food. Of course we still have to eat but a far smaller proportion of the population is now required to do those things enabling society to persue other things (science, technology, arts, ...)
thot_experiment 3y ago
"It never gets any easier, you just get faster" -Greg LeMond
- schneems 3y ago
  Ha, posted the same quote at the same time. Saw yours when the page refreshed.
schneems 3y ago
A quote I think about often in a variety of contexts: > It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond In my HCI class we read about a paper talking about the tech that was supposed to save everyone from so much toil: the washing machine. It explored how we originally thought home appliance innovations would bring us leisure. Instead they’ve brought us more time to spend working. I wish I had the paper name at hand. I think the quote and observation go hand in hand. Anything that could be used to provide ease, can equally be used to buttress performance and when humans have to choose between the two…the systems aren’t set up to reward those that choose the route of joy. While I definitely enjoy programming more than I enjoy hand washing my own clothes. I wish I had less stress and more ease in my life.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  > It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond Yeah! I had this insight when I started running. There's a hill on the Harlem side of the Central Park loop that used to kill me (I'd start my run at Columbus Circle so by the time I got to the hill, I was already exhausted -and- there was a bunch more to go!) I used to think "man once I get good at running, I am gonna eat this hill for breakfast" and then I realized you never get to a place where you love/don't notice it, it just becomes something you end up doing at a higher pace or as part of a longer run, etc. More recently, I realized that my Peloton rides "feel" about the same as they did 2 years ago when I started. I still sometimes feel "rusty", sometimes out of breath, etc. What changes is that the mileage/output I produce for a given amount of "feeling" has gone up a lot. Maybe broadly, I don't feel like I am working much harder now that I have a ton of work responsibility vs when I had smaller scope. Or now that I am a husband/dad vs when I was a single guy/dating. Life feels about the same level of difficulty, but there's a lot more being accomplished. The positive thing is recognizing how much more is being accomplished. The "other" thing is recognizing how much MORE can be accomplished if I reprioritize/focus/etc.
  - droopyEyelids 3y ago
    your two analogies are interesting, because it shows your exercise regimen has kind of the same 'goal' as capitalism- always more! If you get faster and stronger, run further. If you become more productive at your job, increase the expectations. If you exceeded profitability this quarter, set that as a baseline and exceed it by more next quarter! Notably, it doesn't _have_ to be that way. If you were running with a set destination, the hill would become easier over time. If we were paid based on our productivity, we could work less and enjoy the same lifestyle.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Correct. It's a natural consequence of increased per-hour productivity, as implied by the Linder Theorem. You could always slow down if you want to - but you won't want to. This is why you rarely hear about people moving from higher income to lower income countries. It's much rarer to meet someone who moved from the US to the EU than the other way around, and really rare outside of the big hitters (I'm the only resident American I know living in non-Helsinki Finland after 2 years here). Most people just don't want to pay the hidden price of a less frenzied life. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/the-harried-leisure-class.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/th...
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Calling a vague statement about trading arrangements a theorem is surely getting towards peak economics.
jbandela1 3y ago
What technology has brought is choice and options: A woman can choose to decouple having sex with getting pregnant. A person can choose to live hundreds of miles away from their family yet still visit them every weekend. A person can choose to move to a new country, halfway around the world, and still have their parents be able to see and converse with the grandchildren every night. I can choose to talk to a person who speaks another language and have a computer translate for us. On a more serious note: I can choose to have my tooth decay treated without experiencing horrific pain. A compound fracture is not an automatic sentence of death or lifelong severe disability.
- smokel 3y ago
  Great. Now I only need something to make the right choices.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    That is incredibly insightful. Nobel prize winner Richard Thaler advocates "Libertarian Paternalism" - a sort of liberal society that has good "defaults" - such as automatically taking 10% of salary each month and putting into tax sheltered index funds. We will find ourselves using iphones across millions of people to identify "the right choices" over millions of lives - behavioural empidemology
    - schneems 3y ago
      I looked it up and found this on Wikipedia: > Libertarian paternalism is similar to asymmetric paternalism, which refers to policies designed to help people who behave irrationally and so are not advancing their own interests, while interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally. I think that the article posted is people acting rationally based on the incentives and markets in their life. Though it sounds like that’s not the same conclusion you came to. Maybe you can say more. > interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally. The problem I have with this is most bad actors are quite rational, and the most successful not only play within the rules, they shape them (regulatory capture).
lookdangerous 3y ago
This is why the Sabbath matters (see a recent HN post of an article from the New Yorker). If not for intentional, ritual rest, we will accelerate and innovate and accelerate.
- smokel 3y ago
  Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37730894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37730894
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Take writing, for example. If I were on a mechanical typewriter, when I make a typo, I'd have to reach for the white-out. Sure, the backspace key is faster, but it's also easier. Flying somewhere is easier than walking there, not just faster. Sure, I can write more, and travel more places, and they can wind up taking just as much work (or at least time). On the other hand, if I have one thing I want to write (my life work, say), then the computer makes my life both easier and faster.
mc32 3y ago
If people used all the freed-up time to only pursue leisure, progress would be slow. When we use freed-up time to do productive things or things that facilitate others being productive directly or indirectly, that speeds up progress. Some of that progress is good (medicine) and some bad (weapons, user-data driven advertising)
- deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
  In the spirit of the article, progress also means an ever quickening pace of life — and perhaps lessening quality of life, broadly increasing mental health distress and increasing numbers of people falling out of the labor force. I think it’s at least worthwhile to pay mindfulness to the situation, and consider if the path we’re on ends in self destruction. Because most of the west is not setup to pump the brakes.
  - mc32 3y ago
    It has some merit for sure. I also lament some of this loss, but someone has to conduct the progress. As we are, the third world for the most part relies on the first world to carry out most of the modern inventions that fuel progress which also benefits them. (inventions and goods are exported) Someone has to do it. It's Switzerland vs Romania; Or Japan vs Philippines; US vs Argentina.
lcfcjs 3y ago
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beeforpork 3y ago
If you want to and if you are aware of the dangers of what technology and modern work life can do, you can have a convenient and slow life today. Yes, you might be expected to constantly consume, but you don't have to. Throw out the TV, consistently ignore and switch off ads. I firmly believe that it is possible to enjoy the ease of modern technology life, and that drawbacks and not inherent. Technology does make my life easier. One aspect that I think does make life worse today is that families and friends tend to be distributed across larger distances -- too large to decide spontaneously to share a beer in a pub. It is more healthy and convenient to live close to the people you love to spend time with. But I am not sure this is technology's fault.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Tell your boss you're getting rid of every device that lets him interact with you past five pm and tell me how it goes.
  - beeforpork 3y ago
    In many (or even most?) companies where I live and work, it is not that bad. My boss will not try to interact with me past 5pm. If we have a meeting just before 5pm, he will wish me a nice evening. I would not have taken the job otherwise -- yes, probably that cost me some salary.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >... yes, probably that cost me some salary. I'll forever take a slightly lower salary for a solid work-life balance. The mental health benefits, and overall happiness, are worth infinitely more than a little more cash.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Probably depends on one's role in the org. As an IC I've never had this be a problem.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
SirMaster 3y ago
I fail to see how tech such as GPS doesn't make navigating easier. Sure, you can argue that it makes it faster by finding a more optimal route, but you could have had an optimal route without GPS too, it was just harder. In general you will still get there at around the same time, but it will have been easier on the brain to do it.
- ethanwillis 3y ago
  There are inherent limitations to any technology that bias what routes it can find/how it completes a task. A GPS needs to be augmented with additional data to deal with topology it can't directly sense.
mfuzzey 3y ago
The part about cash seems strange. While there are certainly downsides to digital payments (or at least the current implementations of them) such as dependency on the banking system and surveillance there can be no doubt that electronic payments are more convenient. The problem with cash is that there are two separate steps which need to performed in separate geographical locations: 1) Getting the cash (from an ATM or a bank) 2) Spending it What people want to do is #2 but with cash they also have to spend time travelling to some place to do #1. You can optimise this by carrying large amounts of cash to reduce the frequency and time spent doing #1 but that has obvious downsides (like risk of theft) Using electronic payments doesn't force anyone to "go faster" it just spares them from having to do "busy work".
- antx 3y ago
  But... your point doesn't contradict the author's ? So, electronic payments are of course more convenient... but they do indeed force us to go faster. They speed up transactions, reduce queues, and eliminate the need for cash. I'm happy I can buy stuff online, but that in turns also makes me consume more. You're speaking of some of cash issues... but have you thought about impacts on the the homeless of a 100% cashless society?
  - mfuzzey 3y ago
    My point is that electronic payments don't force us to "go faster". They only free us from doing stuff like going to an ATM to get cash (which means getting in my car where I live). I can choose how to spend that time, maybe I want to spend it going for a relaxing walk around my village (which has no ATM). Buying online doesn't have to make you consume more - it remains up to you how much you choose to consume. A 100% cashless society is off topic. I'm not saying we should be 100% cashless but I would like to see electronic payments accepted everywhere (not necessarilly exclusively) - the author mentions Germany which is a real pain with some places only taking cash.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Before digital payments become the norm, you didn't have to go to an ATM to get cash, because cash was all around. You'd get paid in cash and you'd buy and sell in cash. So you've gotten everything backwards.
m3kw9 3y ago
Tech makes it easier imagine no toilet, it also makes me faster as I don’t have to clean up my own pool of sht
high_5 3y ago
Current consumer capitalism and the societies (+politics) that depend on it have painted themselves in a corner. Man cannot keep up with it. There are interesting times ahead of us.
vagab0nd 3y ago
Completely disagree. Let's re-use the example in the article. You need to travel 300 miles. Which one is better? Live in the mid-1700 and work 8 hours a day for 12.5 days, or live in today and work 8 hours a day for 1.25 days?
- mcluck 3y ago
  You missed the point. In modern times it's expected that you'll travel those 300 miles. In the mid 1700s, no average person would be expected to make that journey
  - chongli 3y ago
    Of course an average person didn’t make that journey, but lots of people did. They did build roads all over the place, after all. JS Bach is one famous example of a person who walked hundreds of miles all over Europe to visit people and find work. There were many other (non-famous) people who did the same. Lots of travelling merchants, for example. They may have had draught animals to carry their wares or pull wagons full of goods but they often did the walking on their own feet to move themselves.
    - mcluck 3y ago
      Okay? The point is that 300 miles now is not 300 miles then in terms of hardship. We've shifted that hardship elsewhere, largely by expecting more productivity per hour
- saulpw 3y ago
  That's the point of the article though: very few people needed to travel 300 miles in 1750. New York to DC is only 236 miles--the very first settlement in Chicago was in 1780. The technology to travel longer distances more quickly (via e.g. railroads) is what led to the 'need' to travel 300 miles on a more regular basis. Before that the vast majority of people would be able to live their lives in a much smaller area, and representatives that 'needed' to go to DC would have the time and resources to spend the multiple days traveling for their congressional session. (In fact this is why congress is divided into sessions instead of legislating continuously as would be possible in modern times.)
vmfunction 3y ago
The post may be only referring to digital/information tech.
- xeckr 3y ago
  Which still for example radically simplifies supply chains enabling us to receive life-saving medicine when we need it.
patapong 3y ago
I enjoyed the take of the wonderful children's book "Momo", by Michael Ende, that is based around this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) SPOILERS, kinda: It talks about time thieves, that convince people to save time by offering devices that do things more efficiently. All this does is making society more sterile as people forgo time-wasting activities (such as socializing, art and recreation) to save more time, which is then stolen by these time-thieves. I often think about this book, which feels very prescient, especially being written in 1973! I haven't ready it in a while but remember it being a beautiful and engaging read for any age.
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Troubleshooting, bugs, incompatibilities, gotchas, maintenance, end-of-lifecycle, secrets and configuration management, and documentation ensue.
esafak 3y ago
Faster is easier. I can search all the worlds' information. Much of it is only online, not in print. I can work without commuting. I can communicate with people without visiting them in person. The thesis is asinine.
aidenn0 3y ago
Tech doesn't make our lives faster evenly though; this is a form of the Baumol effect. If we could make 1 widget per hour a generation ago, but can make 10 widgets per hour today, the opportunity cost of an hour of leisure is 9 widgets higher.
JohnMakin 3y ago
> the global capitalist system doesn’t care whether or not you want to use the technology, or whether you believe it should be used to save your time. You will have to use it, and you’re not in charge of how it will be used systemically. This hit really hard, as I am trying to de-google and to some extent de-amazon. It worms itself into your life to a point where it becomes extremely difficult not to use, and it's extremely helpless feeling.
- xeckr 3y ago
  >It worms itself into your life to a point where it becomes extremely difficult not to use, and it's extremely helpless feeling. You could say the same about plumbing, which it is hard to imagine life without. At least with plumbing you don't have to deal so much with literal worms worming themselves into your body.
w10-1 3y ago
Only stressed people want to relax. Otherwise, we want to do more. The changing-baseline effect is an artifact of a particular market competition. Housing prices went up as two-earner households increased faster than the housing supply. (i.e., women's entry into the workplace wasn't primarily a technological change) By contrast, secretary, illustrator and translator are hardly careers any more. What technology (communications, computers, transportation) did was to make it possible for few people to effectively control many people and a lot of resources, without much of a tax for bureaucracy (coordination costs). Sometimes that's been good, sometimes not. Today the driving feature of being busy stems from lacking pace control at work. Professionals used to be distinguished by owning their own standards and controlling the pace of work. Now even doctors and lawyers work in hierarchies with production processes. The only freedom today lies in being off the critical path (but still necessary), or using technology to go directly to consumers. Or just having resources.
- cornfutes 3y ago
  > Only stressed people want to relax. Otherwise, we want to do more. You must be American.
barrysteve 3y ago
Technology is massively overrated. We build the same things cheaper, more generically and long, long after they were first discovered. Electric cars were conceived in the 20s, Fusion in the late 1800s, face recognition in the 20s, ML in the 80s, ect. Cars used to be a variety of iconic shapes and designs, now they are one homogenized platform. Houses used to have a variety of rich architectural styles. Now all new builds have the same rendered concrete, flat walled, sharp edges, soviet style. The internet has automated away our consciousness and conscience, people forgo long term memory of skills for rapid-response look-ups of trivial facts and submit to an endless cycle of similar concepts regurgitated. Truly educational literature has been replaced with an ocean of devouring forms to fill out. Finding literature and written (let's be honest, typed up or generated) content that gives not takes, to the reader is getting rarer statisticaly. Cinema is being replaced with lesser quality home theatres. Dating has been replaced with a 'meat market' app. Duty, heirarchy, order, meaning have all been drained out and people are wasting time on devices designed to mirror their consumption. Computing and software has been subtly manipulated to force users to think as the software provider does, and to waste their time brutally, if they do not. Agent Smith is more relatable everyday. It really became the machines' society when they did the thinking for us. It is deeply sad to watch people waste conceptual power, like a dog returning to it's sick.
- ben_w 3y ago
  It's tempting to think so, but that's not at all right. > Cars used to be a variety of iconic shapes and designs, now they are one homogenized platform. I don't see this. They're pretty diverse in form now, from the "star trek shuttlecraft" look of people carriers and boxy form of the Hummer and similar SUVs, the low-slung form of road sports cars, the cute bubble that is the Microlino, etc. > Houses used to have a variety of rich architectural styles. Now all new builds have the same rendered concrete, flat walled, sharp edges, soviet style. I'm in East Berlin, so I get to see soviet style up close a lot. Surprisingly, this is often a better look than the Brutalist style in the UK in the same era: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5158104,13.4533347,3a,75y,279.94h,114.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sRcwgcHzTELneWeB0SBHVdA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DRcwgcHzTELneWeB0SBHVdA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D120.65466%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5158104,13.4533347,3a,75y,27... (of course, this may just be "the bad ones got taken down, or remodelled, or looked so bad those bits of the city are places nobody has reason to go to — which are all things I suspect of making the past seem rosier than it was). Importantly though, it's also not at all like the modern stuff going up in former parking lots etc.; and when I wander the older parts of the city and suburbs I see many repetitions of the older styles. Also I think you may have edited the order without checking the dates, fusion was first demonstrated in 1930s not late 1800s[0], electric cars were 1820s which I guess is still "20s", etc. [0] we were still arguing about if atoms existed until Einstein's brownian motion paper in 1905, and didn't have E=mc^2 to suggest there was any point to fusion even to those who accepted the atomic model until his other, more famous, 1905 paper… but even that wasn't enough as we didn't know about the mass difference until (IIRC) 1920. I suppose you might have meant "radioactivity" in general? That was Becquerel and the Curies in 1896. (Sounds like a good name for a band…)
chinchilla2020 3y ago
This entire article assumes that the surplus created by technological productivity is wasted. After working as a bartender at a high end dockside restaurant during my younger years, I believe that the upper class and leisure class is larger than ever before. That automation spare time has been converted into massive wealth that will keep the political and business elite rich for generations to come.
em500 3y ago
Before posting our vibes based opinions about how little time we all feel we have, I'd encourage everyone to first spend some time with the data on how Americans actually spend their hours: https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm, and in particular https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1-2022.pdf https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1-2022.pdf. It will probably surprise many that even married couples who both work full time spend on average 2.9 to 3.6 hours per day on leisure and sports (vs 5.1 to 6.1 hours on work and 1.4 to 0.9 hours on child care). https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a7-1519.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a7-1519.htm
- redstonefreedom 3y ago
  You've failed to make a concrete point without realizing it. The point is the effect of technology. So, you've given an x(2) datapoint. Where is your x(1)? You haven't even been explicit about it but the only presupposition that makes a point for you is that x(1) is, "of course", less time than now, by virtue of the fact that we spend some hours a day doing sport & leisure. Which, btw, is demonstrably false. Almost all anthropological evidence/studies point towards us having much less time now in human evolution, only losing to the near-fascist peak of capitalism in the 19th century due to the unchecked boom in power from the industrialists. But without that one outlier, we "have to" spend more time working now than ever before. We objectively have less leisure time.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    >Almost all anthropological evidence/studies point towards us having much less time now in human evolution If we're going by the pop anthropologist's definition work as time spent hunting and gathering, I work about 2 hours a week, far less than anyone from the stone age. If setting up your tent or carrying water from a stream counts as "leisure", then it's only fair to count the work that pays for my rent and city water as "leisure."
Der_Einzige 3y ago
There's a post-modernist philosopher whose entire body of work basically boils down to this argument and being vaguely upset about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio
xeckr 3y ago
0 mention of advancements in medicine. Do you think it was easy for families of the past to see half of their children die from what are now preventable causes?
mnky9800n 3y ago
I was recently thinking that the main issue with today is that an artist I like can produce a finite number of songs/albums/whatever and I quickly grow tired of hearing new things they produce because of how easy it is to listen to anything I want as quickly as I want. I don't even need to move the needle on the record. What's more, any sound slightly notable will likely show up in a meme video and remove itself from it's origins such that you cannot hear it again in the original context, e.g. the music from interstellar. So I'm left with the idea that ai can make an unlimited number of songs that sound like moby such that I never have to listen to the same song by moby twice because I can listen to a new song that sounds like moby every time I want to listen to moby. I'm not sure any of this makes it easier to get excited about music.
bowenjin 3y ago
Eh Unibomber manifesto said it better.
jiriro 3y ago
The author only cries in the (pretty boring) style: “We invented a knife and now things got fucking complicated! We have to deal with NEW OPTIONS like to cut the meal or to cut each other.” :)
lostmsu 3y ago
The article is moronic. If not for technology, 99.9% or more of currently living humans would be dead/never born because it would be too hard for them or their ancestors to live.

160 points by Gigamouse 3y ago

I’m going to suggest people try washing their clothes by hand for one week and see how they feel about the technology convenience versus speed argument.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
Heh. Only two comments here so far, mine and yours, both making an identical point.
- schneems 3y ago
  Two posts about washing machines, one Greg LeMond quote. And my post about washing machines with a Greg LeMond quote.
gcanyon 3y ago
I agree with your point, but a washing machine does make things faster: it takes maybe five minutes total for me to wash and dry my clothes with a machine, while it would take at least ten times as long to do it by hand. That's faster and more convenient.
- schneems 3y ago
  I mentioned in another comment about this. While it’s faster and more convenient, that convenience might not necessarily convert into more joy or ease in your life.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    If someone gets more free time and chooses not to convert it into joy or ease, then that's up to the person, not whatever object or action saved the time.
    - schneems 3y ago
      I recommend the paper: Do Artifacts Have Politics. You can find it for free online if you search the title. It’s a classic HCI paper. Even if you disagree with everything I write, it’s worth reading. The paper asks the question (that you asserted). Essentially: divorced from creator or user intent, can an artifact (or technology) influence how it is used (its politics)? They make very compelling arguments that, yes, the mere existence of a technology (regardless of how people chose to use it) shapes and influences us. So while you might be technically correct, that it’s up to the individual: the larger system (and by extension the technology) does in fact influence us. It’s like the saying that the law applies equally because it prohibits both paupers and princes from stealing bread. It’s technically true, but it (intentionally, to prove a point) misses the point: that the system is set up so no prince would need to steal bread. In Code 2.0 (Laurence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons) makes a point to say that a variety of things influence our behavior: markets, norms, laws, and architecture. New technology falls under “architecture” in this categorization. Technology will exert itself on your behavior and give you new choices, but those choices cannot be divorced from the other legs: laws, norms, and markets.
  - QuercusMax 3y ago
    It also means that's it's much more feasible to own and wash large quantities of clothing. If I have to hand-wash every single piece of clothing, I may think much harder about whether I want to buy more items, and how much I will re-wear before washing. In the past clothing was very expensive and people didn't own many outfits unless they were extremely rich. Advances in technology have both changed our access to clothing and also its maintenance.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  But what if the act of manually washing your clothes was actually better for you (in terms of mental/physical health) than the activities you do instead while the machine's running? Not to mention the negative externalities involved in the manufacture, running and disposal of the machines involved.
ryeights 3y ago
This comment misses the point of the article. I.e., the monotony once required in hand-washing clothes (say by a housewife) has not been converted into free time, but rather converted into a different form of monotony (parents earning dual incomes)
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Really? The standard of living is so much higher now I cannot imagine how these two situations are equivalent. You can live the old single income lifestyle if you so desire.
  - spiderice 3y ago
    Not really. Sure, you can survive with a single income. But you often can’t own two cars, a house, and a cabin in the mountains, and raise 3+ kids with a single income. like you use to be able to do. Further, nobody has much free time today, despite technology doing most of the things that we used to spend our time on. Instead of technology giving everyone free time, everyone just had to work more in order to get the same lifestyle. Edit: though yes, quality of life is better in many ways.
    - wilg 3y ago
      Prove it!
    - em500 3y ago
      Across the US population, people spend 3.5 hours per day on work and 5.2 hours on leisure and sports[1]. Remember that a substantial part of the population does not work much (children, students, retirees, unemployed), so it's untrue that nobody has much free time today. Even the full-time employed spend on average 3.27 hours per day on leisure and sports on weekdays and 5.94 hours per day on weekends and holidays[2]. Checking the same survey from 20 years ago[3], average work has decreased a bit (was 3.69 hours per day) and average leisure and sports increased a bit (was 5.11 hours per day). [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11B.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11B.htm [3] https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2003.pdf https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2003.pdf
W0lfEagle 3y ago
My guess is that it would probably feel quite cathartic to unplug from all those digital distractions and just use your hands on a physical task for a while for many people not used to doing things like this. If however your washing machine breaks and you need to wash by hand AND do all the other hundreds of tasks filling up your time it will probably feel like a massive waste of time.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  When people washed clothes by hand they had far fewer items of clothing.
  - whywhywouldyou 3y ago
    So not only do you gain a meditative and rewarding practice of washing something by hand, it sounds like it incentivizes you to cut down on frivolous spending on clothing as well.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    No, what they did is wear the same clothes a couple more days. Just because I have a fancy suit doesn't mean I wear it -> get it dirty. They also had fewer clothes because they weren't mass produced.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
I've done it, people still do it, it's fine. Takes a little extra time, but that's it.
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Then they're all going in the tub with cold water and Woollite. Wringing each and finding somewhere to dry them is a pain. Honestly, I half do this already because half of my clothes are dry cleaning optional but cold water mechanical wash compatible while being dryer incompatible.
thsksbd 3y ago
If you go outside your comfort zone and talk to people it isn't too hard to find people that grew up in 19th century like lives. Ive met several, including my wife. One professor I knew never took his tenure seriously. He was always out doing fun things. When I asked him why he never seemed worried about it he answered: "why would I be worried? If they don't give me tenure I'll get back to go back to <home country> and become a shepherd again!" He got his tenure. Turns out he was very productive compared to his pampered colleagues.
manicennui 3y ago
The fact that some technology does in fact make life easier does not mean that it all does.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago

Depends on the technology. The washing machine is unambiguously a labour-saving device.

c-linkage 3y ago
The washing machine is a labor shifting device. Instead of a person washing their own clothes, an entire electrification infrastructure must be built, operated, and maintained. A true labor saving invention would be clothing that stays clean without requiring washing.
peterbell_nyc 3y ago
It is, and that misses the point. Lets assume hand washing is an hour and contact time for washer dryer is 10 minutes. We have absolutely saved 50 minutes of labor. Unfortunately we all tend to fill that time up with extra things. Maybe we got a bigger house and have a lawn to mow. Maybe we're a two income household where the person doing the washing is also working, maybe we're checking email. The point is that the majority of people make the choice not to leverage the time saved in additional pursuits but to cram more things into their week. I certainly personally feel a little more frazzled than I believe I did at a time when the Internet was only accessible at big corporations and universities and when phones were (for most people) connected to wires in their houses and the only thing a watch could do was tell time and set alarms. This is not (at least for me) a criticism of technology or innovation. I happen to be unreasonably obsessed with both. It does raise the traditional question of "what is a good life" and how can we be thoughtful about how we engage with technology to ensure that we replace drudgery with joy - not just more tasks, things and obligations.
- mfuzzey 3y ago
  As you say yourself people make the CHOICE to ... Before washing machines they didn't really have any choice but to wash their own clothes (except for a few very rich that had servants to do it). The same is true of many things - a huge proportion of the population used to be involved in subsistence activities just to grow food, and raise animals for food. Of course we still have to eat but a far smaller proportion of the population is now required to do those things enabling society to persue other things (science, technology, arts, ...)

thot_experiment 3y ago

"It never gets any easier, you just get faster" -Greg LeMond

schneems 3y ago
Ha, posted the same quote at the same time. Saw yours when the page refreshed.

schneems 3y ago

A quote I think about often in a variety of contexts: > It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond In my HCI class we read about a paper talking about the tech that was supposed to save everyone from so much toil: the washing machine. It explored how we originally thought home appliance innovations would bring us leisure. Instead they’ve brought us more time to spend working. I wish I had the paper name at hand. I think the quote and observation go hand in hand. Anything that could be used to provide ease, can equally be used to buttress performance and when humans have to choose between the two…the systems aren’t set up to reward those that choose the route of joy. While I definitely enjoy programming more than I enjoy hand washing my own clothes. I wish I had less stress and more ease in my life.

xyzelement 3y ago
> It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond Yeah! I had this insight when I started running. There's a hill on the Harlem side of the Central Park loop that used to kill me (I'd start my run at Columbus Circle so by the time I got to the hill, I was already exhausted -and- there was a bunch more to go!) I used to think "man once I get good at running, I am gonna eat this hill for breakfast" and then I realized you never get to a place where you love/don't notice it, it just becomes something you end up doing at a higher pace or as part of a longer run, etc. More recently, I realized that my Peloton rides "feel" about the same as they did 2 years ago when I started. I still sometimes feel "rusty", sometimes out of breath, etc. What changes is that the mileage/output I produce for a given amount of "feeling" has gone up a lot. Maybe broadly, I don't feel like I am working much harder now that I have a ton of work responsibility vs when I had smaller scope. Or now that I am a husband/dad vs when I was a single guy/dating. Life feels about the same level of difficulty, but there's a lot more being accomplished. The positive thing is recognizing how much more is being accomplished. The "other" thing is recognizing how much MORE can be accomplished if I reprioritize/focus/etc.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  your two analogies are interesting, because it shows your exercise regimen has kind of the same 'goal' as capitalism- always more! If you get faster and stronger, run further. If you become more productive at your job, increase the expectations. If you exceeded profitability this quarter, set that as a baseline and exceed it by more next quarter! Notably, it doesn't _have_ to be that way. If you were running with a set destination, the hill would become easier over time. If we were paid based on our productivity, we could work less and enjoy the same lifestyle.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

Correct. It's a natural consequence of increased per-hour productivity, as implied by the Linder Theorem. You could always slow down if you want to - but you won't want to. This is why you rarely hear about people moving from higher income to lower income countries. It's much rarer to meet someone who moved from the US to the EU than the other way around, and really rare outside of the big hitters (I'm the only resident American I know living in non-Helsinki Finland after 2 years here). Most people just don't want to pay the hidden price of a less frenzied life. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/the-harried-leisure-class.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/th...

hgomersall 3y ago
Calling a vague statement about trading arrangements a theorem is surely getting towards peak economics.

jbandela1 3y ago

What technology has brought is choice and options: A woman can choose to decouple having sex with getting pregnant. A person can choose to live hundreds of miles away from their family yet still visit them every weekend. A person can choose to move to a new country, halfway around the world, and still have their parents be able to see and converse with the grandchildren every night. I can choose to talk to a person who speaks another language and have a computer translate for us. On a more serious note: I can choose to have my tooth decay treated without experiencing horrific pain. A compound fracture is not an automatic sentence of death or lifelong severe disability.

smokel 3y ago
Great. Now I only need something to make the right choices.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  That is incredibly insightful. Nobel prize winner Richard Thaler advocates "Libertarian Paternalism" - a sort of liberal society that has good "defaults" - such as automatically taking 10% of salary each month and putting into tax sheltered index funds. We will find ourselves using iphones across millions of people to identify "the right choices" over millions of lives - behavioural empidemology
  - schneems 3y ago
    I looked it up and found this on Wikipedia: > Libertarian paternalism is similar to asymmetric paternalism, which refers to policies designed to help people who behave irrationally and so are not advancing their own interests, while interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally. I think that the article posted is people acting rationally based on the incentives and markets in their life. Though it sounds like that’s not the same conclusion you came to. Maybe you can say more. > interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally. The problem I have with this is most bad actors are quite rational, and the most successful not only play within the rules, they shape them (regulatory capture).

lookdangerous 3y ago

This is why the Sabbath matters (see a recent HN post of an article from the New Yorker). If not for intentional, ritual rest, we will accelerate and innovate and accelerate.

smokel 3y ago
Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37730894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37730894

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

Take writing, for example. If I were on a mechanical typewriter, when I make a typo, I'd have to reach for the white-out. Sure, the backspace key is faster, but it's also easier. Flying somewhere is easier than walking there, not just faster. Sure, I can write more, and travel more places, and they can wind up taking just as much work (or at least time). On the other hand, if I have one thing I want to write (my life work, say), then the computer makes my life both easier and faster.

mc32 3y ago

If people used all the freed-up time to only pursue leisure, progress would be slow. When we use freed-up time to do productive things or things that facilitate others being productive directly or indirectly, that speeds up progress. Some of that progress is good (medicine) and some bad (weapons, user-data driven advertising)

deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
In the spirit of the article, progress also means an ever quickening pace of life — and perhaps lessening quality of life, broadly increasing mental health distress and increasing numbers of people falling out of the labor force. I think it’s at least worthwhile to pay mindfulness to the situation, and consider if the path we’re on ends in self destruction. Because most of the west is not setup to pump the brakes.
- mc32 3y ago
  It has some merit for sure. I also lament some of this loss, but someone has to conduct the progress. As we are, the third world for the most part relies on the first world to carry out most of the modern inventions that fuel progress which also benefits them. (inventions and goods are exported) Someone has to do it. It's Switzerland vs Romania; Or Japan vs Philippines; US vs Argentina.

lcfcjs 3y ago

[dead]

beeforpork 3y ago

If you want to and if you are aware of the dangers of what technology and modern work life can do, you can have a convenient and slow life today. Yes, you might be expected to constantly consume, but you don't have to. Throw out the TV, consistently ignore and switch off ads. I firmly believe that it is possible to enjoy the ease of modern technology life, and that drawbacks and not inherent. Technology does make my life easier. One aspect that I think does make life worse today is that families and friends tend to be distributed across larger distances -- too large to decide spontaneously to share a beer in a pub. It is more healthy and convenient to live close to the people you love to spend time with. But I am not sure this is technology's fault.

thsksbd 3y ago
Tell your boss you're getting rid of every device that lets him interact with you past five pm and tell me how it goes.
- beeforpork 3y ago
  In many (or even most?) companies where I live and work, it is not that bad. My boss will not try to interact with me past 5pm. If we have a meeting just before 5pm, he will wish me a nice evening. I would not have taken the job otherwise -- yes, probably that cost me some salary.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >... yes, probably that cost me some salary. I'll forever take a slightly lower salary for a solid work-life balance. The mental health benefits, and overall happiness, are worth infinitely more than a little more cash.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Probably depends on one's role in the org. As an IC I've never had this be a problem.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago

SirMaster 3y ago

I fail to see how tech such as GPS doesn't make navigating easier. Sure, you can argue that it makes it faster by finding a more optimal route, but you could have had an optimal route without GPS too, it was just harder. In general you will still get there at around the same time, but it will have been easier on the brain to do it.

ethanwillis 3y ago
There are inherent limitations to any technology that bias what routes it can find/how it completes a task. A GPS needs to be augmented with additional data to deal with topology it can't directly sense.

mfuzzey 3y ago

The part about cash seems strange. While there are certainly downsides to digital payments (or at least the current implementations of them) such as dependency on the banking system and surveillance there can be no doubt that electronic payments are more convenient. The problem with cash is that there are two separate steps which need to performed in separate geographical locations: 1) Getting the cash (from an ATM or a bank) 2) Spending it What people want to do is #2 but with cash they also have to spend time travelling to some place to do #1. You can optimise this by carrying large amounts of cash to reduce the frequency and time spent doing #1 but that has obvious downsides (like risk of theft) Using electronic payments doesn't force anyone to "go faster" it just spares them from having to do "busy work".

antx 3y ago
But... your point doesn't contradict the author's ? So, electronic payments are of course more convenient... but they do indeed force us to go faster. They speed up transactions, reduce queues, and eliminate the need for cash. I'm happy I can buy stuff online, but that in turns also makes me consume more. You're speaking of some of cash issues... but have you thought about impacts on the the homeless of a 100% cashless society?
- mfuzzey 3y ago
  My point is that electronic payments don't force us to "go faster". They only free us from doing stuff like going to an ATM to get cash (which means getting in my car where I live). I can choose how to spend that time, maybe I want to spend it going for a relaxing walk around my village (which has no ATM). Buying online doesn't have to make you consume more - it remains up to you how much you choose to consume. A 100% cashless society is off topic. I'm not saying we should be 100% cashless but I would like to see electronic payments accepted everywhere (not necessarilly exclusively) - the author mentions Germany which is a real pain with some places only taking cash.
carlosjobim 3y ago
Before digital payments become the norm, you didn't have to go to an ATM to get cash, because cash was all around. You'd get paid in cash and you'd buy and sell in cash. So you've gotten everything backwards.

m3kw9 3y ago

Tech makes it easier imagine no toilet, it also makes me faster as I don’t have to clean up my own pool of sht

high_5 3y ago

Current consumer capitalism and the societies (+politics) that depend on it have painted themselves in a corner. Man cannot keep up with it. There are interesting times ahead of us.

vagab0nd 3y ago

Completely disagree. Let's re-use the example in the article. You need to travel 300 miles. Which one is better? Live in the mid-1700 and work 8 hours a day for 12.5 days, or live in today and work 8 hours a day for 1.25 days?

mcluck 3y ago
You missed the point. In modern times it's expected that you'll travel those 300 miles. In the mid 1700s, no average person would be expected to make that journey
- chongli 3y ago
  Of course an average person didn’t make that journey, but lots of people did. They did build roads all over the place, after all. JS Bach is one famous example of a person who walked hundreds of miles all over Europe to visit people and find work. There were many other (non-famous) people who did the same. Lots of travelling merchants, for example. They may have had draught animals to carry their wares or pull wagons full of goods but they often did the walking on their own feet to move themselves.
  - mcluck 3y ago
    Okay? The point is that 300 miles now is not 300 miles then in terms of hardship. We've shifted that hardship elsewhere, largely by expecting more productivity per hour
saulpw 3y ago
That's the point of the article though: very few people needed to travel 300 miles in 1750. New York to DC is only 236 miles--the very first settlement in Chicago was in 1780. The technology to travel longer distances more quickly (via e.g. railroads) is what led to the 'need' to travel 300 miles on a more regular basis. Before that the vast majority of people would be able to live their lives in a much smaller area, and representatives that 'needed' to go to DC would have the time and resources to spend the multiple days traveling for their congressional session. (In fact this is why congress is divided into sessions instead of legislating continuously as would be possible in modern times.)

vmfunction 3y ago

The post may be only referring to digital/information tech.

xeckr 3y ago
Which still for example radically simplifies supply chains enabling us to receive life-saving medicine when we need it.

patapong 3y ago

I enjoyed the take of the wonderful children's book "Momo", by Michael Ende, that is based around this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) SPOILERS, kinda: It talks about time thieves, that convince people to save time by offering devices that do things more efficiently. All this does is making society more sterile as people forgo time-wasting activities (such as socializing, art and recreation) to save more time, which is then stolen by these time-thieves. I often think about this book, which feels very prescient, especially being written in 1973! I haven't ready it in a while but remember it being a beautiful and engaging read for any age.

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

Troubleshooting, bugs, incompatibilities, gotchas, maintenance, end-of-lifecycle, secrets and configuration management, and documentation ensue.

esafak 3y ago

Faster is easier. I can search all the worlds' information. Much of it is only online, not in print. I can work without commuting. I can communicate with people without visiting them in person. The thesis is asinine.

aidenn0 3y ago

Tech doesn't make our lives faster evenly though; this is a form of the Baumol effect. If we could make 1 widget per hour a generation ago, but can make 10 widgets per hour today, the opportunity cost of an hour of leisure is 9 widgets higher.

JohnMakin 3y ago

> the global capitalist system doesn’t care whether or not you want to use the technology, or whether you believe it should be used to save your time. You will have to use it, and you’re not in charge of how it will be used systemically. This hit really hard, as I am trying to de-google and to some extent de-amazon. It worms itself into your life to a point where it becomes extremely difficult not to use, and it's extremely helpless feeling.

xeckr 3y ago
>It worms itself into your life to a point where it becomes extremely difficult not to use, and it's extremely helpless feeling. You could say the same about plumbing, which it is hard to imagine life without. At least with plumbing you don't have to deal so much with literal worms worming themselves into your body.

w10-1 3y ago

Only stressed people want to relax. Otherwise, we want to do more. The changing-baseline effect is an artifact of a particular market competition. Housing prices went up as two-earner households increased faster than the housing supply. (i.e., women's entry into the workplace wasn't primarily a technological change) By contrast, secretary, illustrator and translator are hardly careers any more. What technology (communications, computers, transportation) did was to make it possible for few people to effectively control many people and a lot of resources, without much of a tax for bureaucracy (coordination costs). Sometimes that's been good, sometimes not. Today the driving feature of being busy stems from lacking pace control at work. Professionals used to be distinguished by owning their own standards and controlling the pace of work. Now even doctors and lawyers work in hierarchies with production processes. The only freedom today lies in being off the critical path (but still necessary), or using technology to go directly to consumers. Or just having resources.

cornfutes 3y ago
> Only stressed people want to relax. Otherwise, we want to do more. You must be American.

barrysteve 3y ago

Technology is massively overrated. We build the same things cheaper, more generically and long, long after they were first discovered. Electric cars were conceived in the 20s, Fusion in the late 1800s, face recognition in the 20s, ML in the 80s, ect. Cars used to be a variety of iconic shapes and designs, now they are one homogenized platform. Houses used to have a variety of rich architectural styles. Now all new builds have the same rendered concrete, flat walled, sharp edges, soviet style. The internet has automated away our consciousness and conscience, people forgo long term memory of skills for rapid-response look-ups of trivial facts and submit to an endless cycle of similar concepts regurgitated. Truly educational literature has been replaced with an ocean of devouring forms to fill out. Finding literature and written (let's be honest, typed up or generated) content that gives not takes, to the reader is getting rarer statisticaly. Cinema is being replaced with lesser quality home theatres. Dating has been replaced with a 'meat market' app. Duty, heirarchy, order, meaning have all been drained out and people are wasting time on devices designed to mirror their consumption. Computing and software has been subtly manipulated to force users to think as the software provider does, and to waste their time brutally, if they do not. Agent Smith is more relatable everyday. It really became the machines' society when they did the thinking for us. It is deeply sad to watch people waste conceptual power, like a dog returning to it's sick.

ben_w 3y ago
It's tempting to think so, but that's not at all right. > Cars used to be a variety of iconic shapes and designs, now they are one homogenized platform. I don't see this. They're pretty diverse in form now, from the "star trek shuttlecraft" look of people carriers and boxy form of the Hummer and similar SUVs, the low-slung form of road sports cars, the cute bubble that is the Microlino, etc. > Houses used to have a variety of rich architectural styles. Now all new builds have the same rendered concrete, flat walled, sharp edges, soviet style. I'm in East Berlin, so I get to see soviet style up close a lot. Surprisingly, this is often a better look than the Brutalist style in the UK in the same era: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5158104,13.4533347,3a,75y,279.94h,114.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sRcwgcHzTELneWeB0SBHVdA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DRcwgcHzTELneWeB0SBHVdA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D120.65466%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5158104,13.4533347,3a,75y,27... (of course, this may just be "the bad ones got taken down, or remodelled, or looked so bad those bits of the city are places nobody has reason to go to — which are all things I suspect of making the past seem rosier than it was). Importantly though, it's also not at all like the modern stuff going up in former parking lots etc.; and when I wander the older parts of the city and suburbs I see many repetitions of the older styles. Also I think you may have edited the order without checking the dates, fusion was first demonstrated in 1930s not late 1800s[0], electric cars were 1820s which I guess is still "20s", etc. [0] we were still arguing about if atoms existed until Einstein's brownian motion paper in 1905, and didn't have E=mc^2 to suggest there was any point to fusion even to those who accepted the atomic model until his other, more famous, 1905 paper… but even that wasn't enough as we didn't know about the mass difference until (IIRC) 1920. I suppose you might have meant "radioactivity" in general? That was Becquerel and the Curies in 1896. (Sounds like a good name for a band…)

chinchilla2020 3y ago

This entire article assumes that the surplus created by technological productivity is wasted. After working as a bartender at a high end dockside restaurant during my younger years, I believe that the upper class and leisure class is larger than ever before. That automation spare time has been converted into massive wealth that will keep the political and business elite rich for generations to come.

em500 3y ago

Before posting our vibes based opinions about how little time we all feel we have, I'd encourage everyone to first spend some time with the data on how Americans actually spend their hours: https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm, and in particular https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1-2022.pdf https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1-2022.pdf. It will probably surprise many that even married couples who both work full time spend on average 2.9 to 3.6 hours per day on leisure and sports (vs 5.1 to 6.1 hours on work and 1.4 to 0.9 hours on child care). https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a7-1519.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a7-1519.htm

redstonefreedom 3y ago
You've failed to make a concrete point without realizing it. The point is the effect of technology. So, you've given an x(2) datapoint. Where is your x(1)? You haven't even been explicit about it but the only presupposition that makes a point for you is that x(1) is, "of course", less time than now, by virtue of the fact that we spend some hours a day doing sport & leisure. Which, btw, is demonstrably false. Almost all anthropological evidence/studies point towards us having much less time now in human evolution, only losing to the near-fascist peak of capitalism in the 19th century due to the unchecked boom in power from the industrialists. But without that one outlier, we "have to" spend more time working now than ever before. We objectively have less leisure time.
- Aunche 3y ago
  >Almost all anthropological evidence/studies point towards us having much less time now in human evolution If we're going by the pop anthropologist's definition work as time spent hunting and gathering, I work about 2 hours a week, far less than anyone from the stone age. If setting up your tent or carrying water from a stream counts as "leisure", then it's only fair to count the work that pays for my rent and city water as "leisure."

Der_Einzige 3y ago

There's a post-modernist philosopher whose entire body of work basically boils down to this argument and being vaguely upset about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio

xeckr 3y ago

0 mention of advancements in medicine. Do you think it was easy for families of the past to see half of their children die from what are now preventable causes?

mnky9800n 3y ago

I was recently thinking that the main issue with today is that an artist I like can produce a finite number of songs/albums/whatever and I quickly grow tired of hearing new things they produce because of how easy it is to listen to anything I want as quickly as I want. I don't even need to move the needle on the record. What's more, any sound slightly notable will likely show up in a meme video and remove itself from it's origins such that you cannot hear it again in the original context, e.g. the music from interstellar. So I'm left with the idea that ai can make an unlimited number of songs that sound like moby such that I never have to listen to the same song by moby twice because I can listen to a new song that sounds like moby every time I want to listen to moby. I'm not sure any of this makes it easier to get excited about music.

bowenjin 3y ago

Eh Unibomber manifesto said it better.

jiriro 3y ago

The author only cries in the (pretty boring) style: “We invented a knife and now things got fucking complicated! We have to deal with NEW OPTIONS like to cut the meal or to cut each other.” :)

lostmsu 3y ago

The article is moronic. If not for technology, 99.9% or more of currently living humans would be dead/never born because it would be too hard for them or their ancestors to live.