We seem to have become obsessed with making life easier. We have online shopping, food delivered to the door, remote controls, sat-navs, automatic doors and machines that will do almost anything except get up and make us a cup of tea.
But wait I hear you shout! We did have Teasmade devices back in the Eighties on the bedside table. Yes, the concept of inventing things to make life easier is not new.
The washing machine was first patented way back in the 1690s but dryers and dishwashers have only been around since the 1940s. So, for 250 years you still had to hang the washing up in the garden.
The refrigerator, freezer and microwave have all contributed to us being able to make dinner in five minutes instead of the whole day cooking process before. We even got so blasé about the whole process that we had then to go and invent a slow cooker because we subsequently discovered that the whole day cooking process made our meat tastier and more tender.
And yet with all this technological help, we seem to have less patience than ever.
If the Internet goes down, or even if it slows because there are 65 active connections going on in your house, we get mad.
If the Talabat delivery is five minutes late we get mad.
If the restaurant is full and there are no tables available we get mad.
And yet we accept waiting an hour on hold on the phone to a helpdesk, which will be answered by an automated system or a chat bot.
In the past if we wanted to find something out, we had to go and read a book which probable meant going to library, now we have Wikipedia, which is even being surpassed by Chat GPT.
If we needed to buy a 10mm right angled flange to fix the washing machine we had to go into town and browse all the shelves in Ace Hardware till we found the right thing. Now we go onto a webpage and have it delivered the next day without even getting off the sofa.
Have all these time and labour saving devices made us happier? Or have they made us less capable of coping when something goes wrong.
Could you create a solution without using your phone? I can. But then again, I am ‘old school’ and I grew up before the Internet and mobile phones. I was 42-years-old before I got my first Nokia. Apart from making phone calls, the only other thing you could do with it was play a game called snake. I used to be able to hold every important phone number in my head. Now I have to look up my phone to find out my wife’s number.
The thing is, we have spent millions inventing and buying devices to save ourselves five minutes and, what do we do with these five minutes, doomscrolling!
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