This is genius! No we humans weren’t made for all this constant communication and tedium! Give me a beach or mountain view and some peace and quiet. Maybe AI will help. Or not….
Thanks for your uncompromising voice. It is a beacon shining in the night dominated by privileged self-help and productivity gurus. By the way...what do you think about Getting Things Done by David Allen and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg? I have not been able to tear those down.
I often say I wish I was born Amish. I don’t think I could go from the current modern world as a 56 yo to live like I was Amish but I respect that they pretty much use modern conveniences only as required to earn a living.
I have a PW manager with over 500 passwords between my work and home life. I am an accountant by training and am very tech savvy, but I do believe that tech ceased improving my life about a year or two prior to the COVID Lockdowns. Endless frustration ensues when trying to maneuver through the hoops of having to login to get the things that used to be delivered by mail. And now with two factor authentication my phone and my laptop are chained to my side. I work 8-9 hours in front of a computer and then have to spend 1-3 hours 1-3 nights per week to keep up with home life.
And I don’t even try to go to many stores to buy merchandise as most of them (other than grocers) don’t have the levels of stock they once did. At this point I’d go back to 1995 technology in a heartbeat. No cell phone (okay, one for calling AAA in an emergency but too expensive to use otherwise).
I got the notification that you commented just as I was scrolling through my Notion database of passwords 😃
I also remember 1995 tech so fondly - I also had enough of an attention span to read books and write without constant disruptions. In 1995, it didn't feel like your attention was being assaulted whenever you went online. We used to get annoyed at banner ads, but now it's endless pop-ups, autoplay videos, and password requests. (I love browsing the Wayback machine, https://web.archive.org for those glory days.) Companies used to have phone numbers to talk to real people, and now we have to try GetHuman.com or spend hours on hold, pressing numbers, only to get disconnected and restart the process.
I signed up for my first dating website (Nerve personals) in 2002 - you wrote a profile and people could message you! Today, dating apps are full of spambots and micro-transactions that make you pay if you want to get your profile *noticed*. AI filters for the photos, people 'optimizing' their profiles... it's a mess.
Technology *can* be great, but everything flows towards monetization and optimization, so overall there are more possibilities for disruptions and breakdowns that wind up taking 500x longer than the elegant solution we already had 30 years ago.
You definitely should. Id pair it with their will be blood if haven’t happened to see…both are about how capitalism supplanted Christianity. And now on Linkedin we got corporate missionaries re-interpreting “scripture”. I cannot wait to move back to hawaii and unplug like andy dufresne escaping shawshank.
late to this party. similar to esther above, found this via google from my “why is modern life so exhausting” search. came here immediately to subscribe. so glad to know i’m not alone in my views. thank you.
I work for Kaiser now, so I am mired in peak complexity. I enjoyed your column! Keep fighting the good fight!
This is genius! No we humans weren’t made for all this constant communication and tedium! Give me a beach or mountain view and some peace and quiet. Maybe AI will help. Or not….
Thanks for your uncompromising voice. It is a beacon shining in the night dominated by privileged self-help and productivity gurus. By the way...what do you think about Getting Things Done by David Allen and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg? I have not been able to tear those down.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear abt the various issues you faced
They sound genuinely argh 😣
I often say I wish I was born Amish. I don’t think I could go from the current modern world as a 56 yo to live like I was Amish but I respect that they pretty much use modern conveniences only as required to earn a living.
I have a PW manager with over 500 passwords between my work and home life. I am an accountant by training and am very tech savvy, but I do believe that tech ceased improving my life about a year or two prior to the COVID Lockdowns. Endless frustration ensues when trying to maneuver through the hoops of having to login to get the things that used to be delivered by mail. And now with two factor authentication my phone and my laptop are chained to my side. I work 8-9 hours in front of a computer and then have to spend 1-3 hours 1-3 nights per week to keep up with home life.
And I don’t even try to go to many stores to buy merchandise as most of them (other than grocers) don’t have the levels of stock they once did. At this point I’d go back to 1995 technology in a heartbeat. No cell phone (okay, one for calling AAA in an emergency but too expensive to use otherwise).
I got the notification that you commented just as I was scrolling through my Notion database of passwords 😃
I also remember 1995 tech so fondly - I also had enough of an attention span to read books and write without constant disruptions. In 1995, it didn't feel like your attention was being assaulted whenever you went online. We used to get annoyed at banner ads, but now it's endless pop-ups, autoplay videos, and password requests. (I love browsing the Wayback machine, https://web.archive.org for those glory days.) Companies used to have phone numbers to talk to real people, and now we have to try GetHuman.com or spend hours on hold, pressing numbers, only to get disconnected and restart the process.
I signed up for my first dating website (Nerve personals) in 2002 - you wrote a profile and people could message you! Today, dating apps are full of spambots and micro-transactions that make you pay if you want to get your profile *noticed*. AI filters for the photos, people 'optimizing' their profiles... it's a mess.
Technology *can* be great, but everything flows towards monetization and optimization, so overall there are more possibilities for disruptions and breakdowns that wind up taking 500x longer than the elegant solution we already had 30 years ago.
Could not agree more...this, too re: the corporate evangelical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs
Love this! And since this is the 1,000,000th time this movie has been mentioned recently, I should finally check it out.
You definitely should. Id pair it with their will be blood if haven’t happened to see…both are about how capitalism supplanted Christianity. And now on Linkedin we got corporate missionaries re-interpreting “scripture”. I cannot wait to move back to hawaii and unplug like andy dufresne escaping shawshank.
I found this article from googling "why is modern life so complicated" haha! I think you hit the nail on the head. I feel much better!
late to this party. similar to esther above, found this via google from my “why is modern life so exhausting” search. came here immediately to subscribe. so glad to know i’m not alone in my views. thank you.
Love this! Really resonated with how I've been feeling about wellness & life.
Brilliant summary.
I blame the Tech Geeks.
This is their New Religion.
Their new God.
They've mired the world in it with their dime-a-dozen computer science degrees.
And my sense is there will be backlash to the Techie Community over time.
Plenty of people have lost time and money over everything you've outlined and there's ALWAYS someone to blame....