Technology Makes Life Easier. Sometimes.

After reading and agreeing with Heather's Google+ post (reproduced below), I felt like this would be a good time to try to flatten out on the computer screen what I think about the effect of technology. 

Initially I agreed: technology has certainly made some things easier for me. One quick example is the waitlist that BYU introduced recently, which allows me to sign up for the waitlist and not have to check back every few hours to try to add a class I need. The ways technology has streamlined and reduced the running around in my life are great!

But, rather than only look at the ways it has changed things for the better, I want to consider ways it has changed things in ways that don't make my life easier. 

As far as school goes,while I feel that a lot of things are easier, general expectation is higher as well. Some of my professors have expressed that their students should be able to manage short deadlines for papers because "everything is online now"; and while I admit many things are easy to find online, sometimes specialized knowledge of how to find them is still necessary, and so many more resources available requires more "sifting" time than if you don't have a lot of resources. 

I don't have data for this, but I feel that the expectations of professors in the pre-online-database era would have had lower expectations for finding sources for research or turning in polished drafts (when you have to write by hand or on the typewriter, you can't tweak as much).

Socially speaking, people expect you to stay in touch with them—because it's so easy, right?

There's also more uncertainty. Sure, I can access resources more quickly, but that's only when the database is working; when there were only copies of something, you knew you had to plan for going to the library to look at it, or place it on hold, etc. But now we expect to have it all the time, and if it's not there, we're not sure when we can access it again. While we do have convenience past generations never had, We have inconveniences that they didn't have to deal with as well. 

More on the topic of uncertainty—Looking to the future, technology has made it easier to search for jobs (no more are we restricted to looking through the paper for jobs posted), but hasn't it also demanded that we use resources like Monster or LinkedIn in order to be "in the loop" with job finding? And all the other ways that have been concocted to help people find jobs...you need to know those, too. The democratization of access to the internet also means that organizations are still struggling to find preeminence and establish that they're the best. I could also go into how technology is changing the actual jobs that are open, and how people approach making jobs. 

The disruption of technology to the system (economic, social, etc.) may or may not outweigh the ease it brings into our lives, because the uncertainty and higher expectations contribute to our stress, and force us to re-think how we interact socially, how we work, how we play—how to live our lives.