If there is one thing that characterises our modern society, it’s convenience. It is everywhere you look and everywhere you tap. There has been no stone left unturned when it comes to convenience and efficiency, the App Store has it all. Want to order a taxi? There’s several apps for that. Hungry? A hundred apps for that. Want to book a cleaner for your house? There’s even an app for that. We’re all aware that there is literally an app for absolutely every possible service. Every shiny new app from Silicon Valley offers new avenues for the thumb, to overwhelm the more traditional and laborious forms of life’s logistics.
This is a tricky topic. I myself am completely beholden to these gems of convenience: I order Ubers, I eat Deliveroos and I’m not sure how I’d navigate anywhere without Google Maps. These apps are fantastic, they are smooth, they are impressive. Life in a pandemic would have been that little bit more sour if we couldn’t gorge on our favourite restaurant meals, in the comfort of our homes. But what impact is this having on us as a society? What broader themes does it underline?
Apps are only one part of the story. When did convenience and efficiency become part of our cultural make-up? My money (or capital), would be on Capitalism. Capitalism functions off profit to survive. If you don’t grow in a Capitalist system, you die. Businesses must become more efficient if they are to survive. Think of the first production lines in Ford’s industrial America. To stream-line the production system and send cars across the nation, Ford had to be as efficient as possible in creating those vehicles. There is, of course, logic and utility in this. It meant that supply could meet demand and drive down cost, therefore enabling your Average Joe to purchase an automobile. Back then, this was a huge deal. The car was no longer the preserve of the ultra-rich.
Of course, this is not limited to automobiles. Everywhere we look, ultimate efficiency is the goal. Computers are today, over 300 million times faster than they were only several decades ago. An incredible feat, one worth celebrating. With faster computers come faster businesses, tasks that once took days now take hours, even minutes. Gone are the days of the laborious faxing of invoices (unless you work for the NHS), no longer is accounting done on a physical tabled book, we have Microsoft Excel. We don’t even have to communicate with our colleagues via physical speech, we can just Slack them instead. The goal is to become more and more efficient, to stream-line further and further, to remove as many steps as possible. No longer do I have to walk outside, hail a cab and make sure I have cash to pay the driver. I simply press on my screen, and it appears, deducting the money from my account. No longer do I have to call the takeaway and order my meal using audible words, again, more thumb movements on a screen and it’s done. But in doing this, we have removed the human element from these tasks. We have condensed them into an efficient format — down to the swipes of a thumb.
Again, I want to reiterate, these are not inherently bad things. They make our lives easier, life is hard enough already for most, why make it any harder? And I completely get that, I do. But the only worry is, when will our endless appetite for efficiency end, if ever? It is self-fulfilling, perhaps it will never end. And once we ‘elevate’ our lives to the maximum possible efficiency levels what will we, as humans, become? Mere vessels doted on by devices and AI-driven machines? There will come a time, I’m sure, when the thumb itself is too inefficient and will one day become obsolete. Just another relic of evolution that we no longer have use for, similar to the appendix. Indeed, Elon (who else) is already on the case in designing a chip where we could choose our own films and television with our minds — called Neuralink. Soon we won’t even have to ‘tap’ and order a Deliveroo, we might just simply think ‘I want a buttermilk chicken burger and fries’ and within minutes, the knock will be at the door. Or in this case, the driver won’t even have to knock, his Neuralink will just inform your Neuralink that he’s arrived, and your AI-driven machine will bring you your food without you having to lift a thumb.
Becoming more efficient might be something deeply ingrained in our ape-minds. To constantly improve upon both ourselves, and a world of our design. And in many respects, this can certainly be a good thing, but I think it’s important to consider its consequences. If we keep making things in life easier and quicker, will we one day become inept at doing anything? Will our complete device-dependence spell our doom? Is removing all the trivialities of life, detracting from the very experience of life itself? Maybe. But one thing that is more clear, is that we should certainly question where this never-ending cycle of efficiency and convenience is taking us. We might not like where we end up.
