Technologies throwing our babies with the bathwater - Part 1

We always find ourselves in an endless mission to improve our life. We keep trying to make things around us look, feel and function better. The question is, however, is this making us any happier?

In our attempt to “improve” our life, we tend to maximize the employment of technology in order to do what we do faster, more accurately and with fewer resources. Well, that seems all good. However, there is a catch somewhere here.

Technology enables us to eliminate what we think is “unnecessary” from our life, so that we maximize our efficiency and be able to do more with less. What we wanted to do is to be as efficient as possible, to maximize our output and minimize our input.

But, wait a minute. We are not talking about a machine here, right?! For a machine, this output/input thing applies, but what is “efficiency” when you talk about the life of a human being?

A situation developed when we copied the concept of machines’ efficiency to our life. Doing this, we, unknowingly, started to convert people into machines, without adding buttons to them! We overlooked the fact that the purpose of a machine is to work efficiently, while the purpose of a human being is to live happily.

For example, you heard about tablets that are as nutritious as a complete meal. Instead of going for lunch, you can just have some tablets and you are done! This would save you time, effort and money. Further more, the tablets would provide accurately balanced quantities of all what your body needs. Accordingly, tablets are even healthier. So, why shouldn’t you spare the “unnecessary” time, effort and money you spend on having regular meals and just go for the nice little tablets?

The scenario above assumes that the purpose of having food is to fuel our bodies. While this is true, it is not the complete story. Actually, having food is a joy. We enjoy the colors, the smell and the taste of food. We enjoy the company of friends and family while having food together. We enjoy the atmosphere of the place where we have food. Sometimes, we have food even if we are not hungry, just to enjoy it! Now, is this joy “unnecessary”?! Of course not, unless you are talking about a machine!

So, are we trying to say here that technology is bad and we should get away from it?! This is something I will be talking about in Part 2 in order to illustrate from where twindi.com is coming. Till then, I will be looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

twindi Team
http://www.twindi.com/