Efficiency
We lust after it. We now have a handful of people defining
the experience of many on social media platforms. Reddit has less than 500 paid
employees (but thousands of volunteers.) Other platforms also have small, giggling
gaggles of employees defining the user experience.
Coders create the environment where technology devotees live.
For the sake of efficiency, we cede our information curation to a handful of
coders. Voice AI offers only one verbal response. Efficient but scary.
Efficiency and autonomy seem to battle. When ostensibly wise
coders and AI prompt recommended language and succinct answers, we forfeit
something – but it isn’t our time. We seem to gain time with this added “efficiency”.
But we must recognize that language is also a technology too and does not
provide some absolute freedom of expression.
We are also overwhelmed with information. Although we ask AI
and the coders behind it to ease our environment, the cascading flow of bad
news in front of our eyes makes us assuage our guilt by claiming some type of victim
status.
Therefore we sometimes need to take a walk in the woods and
draw something with a pencil. We need to use our extra time wisely. Maybe
efficiency needs to be redefined. I basically never proof read emails or
messages, I trust Google with my information curation, I sometimes used
recommended responses on texts. I have been sucked into the lust of efficiency.
I love it. I can get so much done so quickly.
Rambling words don’t counter my tendency towards using the
highest efficiency systems possible. I look at every physical and virtual
system and think about optimizing its efficiency. I can’t help myself. But I observe
the danger of efficiency and try to design wonderful things with my free time.
Sometimes I just watch YouTube “how it’s made” videos and eat chocolate too. C’est
la vie.
