Innovation creates less time

I wonder when work became a bad thing. I don’t mean showing up to a job you hate. I mean the extra effort to make something better.

Like grinding your coffee beans versus inserting a pod. A pod promises ease and time back, but at what cost?

Coffee pods don’t taste as good as the real thing. They aren’t as fresh. Picking a pod isn’t as satisfying as hearing the origin story of a bag of beans, and smelling each one to see which one excites your sense. A pod of coffee doesn’t fill the house with the same smell as a pot of coffee does. Pods are made far away from your home, in a place you’ve never visited, and do nothing to support your local community. Pods come in plastic that, the coffee brews through, poison your body and fills landfills, when coffee grinds are excellent for the garden and easy to compost.

And besides, what do we actually do with that time we saved?

Being able to press a button just made me work more. In the morning instead of having to measure, grind, and brew a pot of coffee, I could hit a button and answer emails at the same time. At the office the convenience of inserting a pod meant 4 - 5 cups of coffee a day, and long(er) days of work. More time being sedentary, in meetings or at my desk. 

How often do we actually use the time created by technology to do something for ourselves or something productive for our futures? 

You would think that with all the technological efficiencies present in our lives that we would have unlimited time to fuck off. But somehow we don’t. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed our day is filled with innovative technology that has made our lives easier but has yet to advance our lives. Nobody I talk to boasts about all the free time they have, and their dreams have taken off.

We don’t have to grind and brew our coffee. We don’t have to make our breakfast, lunch, or dinner, which means we don’t have to clean up after breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We don’t walk, we drive. We have washing machines for our clothes. We have dishwashers for our dishes. Grocery stores so we don’t have to grow our food. Plumbing so we don’t have to fetch water. Audio books so we don’t have to read. So many time saving innovations and yet no one has any time to spare.

It’s weird.

So at what cost are we “innovating” and how do we actually define advancing? It doesn’t feel like we’re advancing, so something has to change before we innovate ourselves into extinction.