Social Insight #2: Is Technology Making Us Lazy

Time Magazine says that the class of 2014 will barely touch emails. Come to think of it, when was the last time you have sent an email to say Hi to a friend? I myself have not used email outside of corporate use. And if my cow orkers can tweet me their concerns or issues, or send me a DM via FB, I'd be happy to communicate with my cow orkers by those means and completely forget about email.

Checking my gmail, I see that it is littered with email notifications from facebook, e-statements, Twitter notices, spam that gmail failed to filter out, some digested e-group mail, stuff I don't read in short. And that's what makes email annoying. The manual need to dispose of these things, whereas in, say, twitter, these things just fade to make way for newer content. Even with the implementation of Priority Inbox, which is a failure, in my opinion, things still end up in clutter and disarray. Even if you have folders, without rules, you will need to manage your mails on your own which is very inconvenient.

Why am I talking about all these? Well, awhile ago, I was informed by our IT that I need to fill up a form to transfer account ownerships. While this is OK, I was further informed these forms need to be hand-delivered to the satellite office. To be honest, with the level our techonology has reached, filling up forms has become a very cumbersome task. Much more hand-delivering them. And here comes an admission: I am too lazy to do both.

We are in an era where we don't always need to go to the mall to buy stuff: we go to ebay, check there and have it delivered to our residence. We forgo the music bar for iTunes. We are closing down bookstores in favor of Amazon and Kindle. We are saving trees and laying off people thanks to Internet newspaper. And day by day more stars are born on Youtube than on the TV. The thought of having to hand-deliver and hand-fill a bunch of documents is kind of anti-climactic. The act does not belong to 2011. And while a lot of organizations, banks most especially, still require hand-filled up forms, it is inconvenient and inviting errors.

I'd be honest that technology has made me lazy, but wait, I am driving a point here. These manual tasks take time which can be used for other more pleasurable or productive things, like attending to your tasks, babysitting your kids, or baking pies. And these days, the more time you have, the better. Because time is the only thing that cannot be replaced or re-earned. You can buy a new pacemaker, but not extend your time on this planet. And that is technology's role. Not to make us lazy, but to give us more time to do more things.