Inconvenient Conveniences – Is Easier Always Better?

"Everywhere in our society, we’re sold things to make life easier.

We’re sold cars so we don’t need to walk. Fast food so we don’t need to cook. Blackberries and iPhones so we never need to be offline.

The standard logic is that if something makes life easier, it automatically makes life better. I wonder if that is really the case...

Yes, the internet, email and mobile devices enable us to stay connected. I’ve lived the last 8 months abroad, and without Facebook or Skype, I would have completely lost touch with many friends and family back home. But those same conveniences allow us to work non-stop, be flooded with interruptions and live vicariously through our digital personalities, instead of living our real lives..."

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2010/04/28/inconvenience/

I don't think so. Everything that makes a life easier harmful may not be necessarily harmful. However, excessive use can certainly be harmful.

Smartphones, robots and computers offer to make our lives ever-more efficient, but what do we lose by accepting that seductive promise? Tom Chatfield spoke to author Nicholas Carr about the perils of over-automation.

“We have come to assume that efficiency and convenience are always good…this is a naive approach”.

“I believe we should ask of our computers that they enrich our experience of life… instead of turning us into passive watchers of screens”.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150511-do-computers-make-life-too-easy

My answer is no. A thing may not be harmful in itself, but may become, depending on how human beings use it.  For example, the fast food that you mentioned may not be harmful always, but may become, especially when someone habitually feeds on it.   

I would think of it in terms of trade offs rather than easy vs. harmful. We give up something for another in return. What we must do is think for a moment the implications of what we are giving up. In the case of fast food people do not usually think of the implications because they rely on regulatory agencies to filter the good from the bad (if it is accepted it is good) and the wisdom of the crowds (everybody does it, then it must be good). This some times lead to undesired consequences such as obesity, vices, etc. Just because it is not regulated does not mean that it is immune to abuse. This is what happens with fast foods, people overuse it, instead of thinking it of a solution to extreme circumstances where there is shortage of time.

Hello Marianne, I believe that MODERATION is the key, whether it is in our consumption of food or spices, or in expressing our joy/ happiness or sadness over our loss. Most GOOD things, in excess, become harmful. We can also apply the same principle to money; love of money and luxury may be harmful. (As researchers, we can also apply the same principle of moderation in our work. Let us not burn ourselves out, or forget our families/relatives; let us make time for the important people in our lives.)

New technology is being developed every day to help make life easier, such as smart homes that turn appliances on and off at our direction, or speech recognition devices. Technology can become more efficient. For example, how can tasks be labeled in a smart home for the elderly so that it assists them by inferring their day to day actions.

No all practical advance is harmful, but much of them are it. Some advances as the microwaves are practical but they have risks to very long term.

When we talk to make our life easy we desire to avoid our work & action our life .It is fact that modern present system whether it is a kitchen or drawing room or to move outside for the change ,such environment certainly become life easy .

But to make life easy ..... at what cost !! .We become ideal & we fail to nourish our mind which is a useful treasure for our life  with this to make our mind easy we are avoiding the very basic purpose of our life .

This is my personal opinion 

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you very much for your immediate response on the question and also for your personal suggestiones.

With best wishes and best regards,

Prof. Marianne Shahsuvaryan

Cooking food, the prehistoric man uses less energy. We had more time to evolve our brain. In the future here thousands of years we may be just brains wrapped in a protective layer of fat.

I think that fundamentally, there's no such thing as a free lunch. We certainly have taken a lot of the drudgery out of living a life, and so as a direct consequence, people have to find ever more creative ways to add value to society. And that becomes the new struggle. Not so much collecting firewood, fetching water from the stream, and hunting wild boar for your next meal.

Is it harmful to have to find ever more creative way of adding value to society, so we can afford to live this easier life? No, and struggle is the human experience.

Life should not go easier, there should not be any free meal. Even the fast food maker has to struggle with associated drudgery. Even a crippled man has to try climbing the hill, if he comes to know that there is free meal available on top of the hill. Even the life of a beggar is not easy, he /she has to brave all odds and should find one square meal. That is way of life, that is nature. Nature has already optimized every thing on this earth.

Almost all! But the quantum of harmfulness could be considerably reduced if we use the means of making life easy wisely keeping societal issues and mankind in mind.

I do not think, we can say it that way. It is true that one has to make efforts for getting good things in life. But there are other things that make our life easier, but are  not harmful e.g. positive attitude, compassion, love, helpful attitude. All of these help make  life easier and fulfilling, but they are rarely harmful.

Dear prof, man who set .many selfish desire's....he is not deserved.. to be helpful for society.....*.....humbleness......*..kind to other needy people... *help them BUT *not harm them........*.life become simple...*as__.technology...MISUSED .........commercially exploited ..Man should....live not for himself......*service to humanity ....how is ..his /her ....life..Habit and habitat.....pursued.. matters a lot ......Dr Muralidhar, Bangalore,INDIA

Harmfulness is a matter of degree.  We could say that everything is harmful depending on the 'amount' of it we 'consume'.  Even emotions are bad for us when taken to the extreme.  The final words of Othello illustrate this well,

"Then you must speak of one who loved not wisely, but too well" 

No.

Is, for instance, wheel harmful?

Making things simpler and easier shrinks the desire and motivation for work and acting.

Inconvenient Conveniences – Is Easier Always Better?

"Everywhere in our society, we’re sold things to make life easier.

We’re sold cars so we don’t need to walk. Fast food so we don’t need to cook. Blackberries and iPhones so we never need to be offline.

The standard logic is that if something makes life easier, it automatically makes life better. I wonder if that is really the case...

Yes, the internet, email and mobile devices enable us to stay connected. I’ve lived the last 8 months abroad, and without Facebook or Skype, I would have completely lost touch with many friends and family back home. But those same conveniences allow us to work non-stop, be flooded with interruptions and live vicariously through our digital personalities, instead of living our real lives..."

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2010/04/28/inconvenience/

A short remark: easier does not necessarily entail simple. Life is to be simple, although not always easy.

Carlos,

I agree simple is not always easy, It is full of toil, but healthy, I takes long and hard walk to visit a friend or relative, but reception is genuinely warm.  Lifestyle disease, obesity in not known in simple life, while genuine concerns for dear ones and others remain intact.

Life neither is easy nor simple and one never knows what is awaiting him just round the corner.

Dear Ms. Jacono,

I agree with you entirely. I also add microwaves effect

I personally work on complex systems. I literally earn my life on them. However, I am fully convinced that is to be lived in a simple way. That, in fact, is one of the landmarks of wisdom.

No, I am not fully agree with the statement of the question. I would like to give an example: helping others are not harmful at all, it may not benefit you directly sometimes but its really not harmful at least. 

Also, answering your question is not harmful to me at all and may not be harmful to the other experts as well.

Dear Debi,

I think it is important how you define the "harmful' as a thing/term. And of course the harmfulness for whom?

It is very abstract question....

Dear Evelina,

The question is not an abstract one, since in the example it is written that harmful means for health and for whom - for human fast food, sure not for animals

Thank you for your opinion

Prof. Marianne Shahsuvaryan

Dear, Marianne,

If we are talking about the abstractness of the question, but not the real meaning of it, then in the question I would like to highlight word "everything". Is it very concrete?

I have rise different questions. There it is only one example given, but I think there could be lots of them. When I mean abstract question, I was asking: are we talking about harmfulness for culture, society, our family, work group or a person? and harmfulness for health, person's skills, knowledge, different kind of the relationships and etc. There could be different backgrounds ant points of view on this question.

Good point, Evelina. I fell into the same trap. :-))))

Using logic and approach from opposite direction we could conclude that "Fast Food is Everything!"

Dear Evelina,

Clarifying the question the answer will express personal point of view on harmfulness of any kind of progressive achievement on personal health and other examples will be given by researchers to confirm or reject the statement in the question, which narrow and concrete

Dear Marianne, yes, it is harmful.  Not everything. Let's hope that the slaw development of our genes will do the necessary in order to make us surviving dispite the stupidities that we do... In any case - laseness is one main motor of our progress.

I believe that any thing which does not follow the laws of nature is harmful to all natural Entities.

Is everything that makes a life easier harmfull ?

No.

Drudgerous practices have always been replaced by new/efficient/innovative techniques making the lives comfortable.

Railway signalmen used to climb up the pole for setting up/down the signal for every arriving/departing train. What harm has been done by devising the current form of railway signal that makes the system efficient and lives of the operators lot more comfortable?

Numerous devices / techniques have been developed for large scale industrial application which have helped the nation to meet the ever rising demands of the increasing population. It may be said that mechanization/automation is harmful as it replaces the huge labour force. Such a logic is not justified as the human resources must be utilized efficiently instead of subjecting them to age old/ laboursome/ tedius / drudgerous/ time consuming/ inefficient / hazardous working environment. It is the responsibility of the planners to put the manpower, displaced by automation, to more efficient/ useful purposes instead of blaming the automation for unemployment. 

Likewise, several domestic appliances have made the life easier (so to say) and wise people may quite possibly rate them harmful in one respect or the other.

It should, however, be born in mind that everything has to be used scrupulously within limits. Excessive use of anything may be harmful. This applies to the cited example of fast foods as well which, whenever needed/felt, should be used as supplementary food, within limits, instead of making them the staple food.

Fast food does not make life easier, ask your stomach and all other organs of the body.

I used to live down the road from a junk food take-out restaurant and people will stop by to eat, then some will throw the left-overs on the street and go away. I noticed that loose dogs running for the food remains will smell them but not touch them!! Not fit enough for dogs, yet fit for humans??

Electrical equipment in the house make things easier, however, they generate magnetic fields around them which are harmful.

House construction has made better homes, but they can be harmful if, for example, the plumbing/heating systems are flawed.

I think many things we use are harmful, but they can be adjusted. I used to tell my students that a tent is better than a home due to the multitude of issues one needs to solve regarding a "proper" house.