The more efficient technology makes us, the less efficient we become.
Of course, information technology saves time by doing things quickly. Or does it? Bosses save wages, but we become their new, unwilling wage slaves. Meanwhile, with the automation of more and more processes that used to take a five-minute phone call, we find ourselves entering into hours-long commerce with computer programs that lead us into Escher-like closed loops, only to report playfully, “Oops, something went wrong . . .” And if after this you stay on the phone so you can speak to a real person, the real people increasingly appear to have been so degraded by enforcement of machine-like algorithms that they might as well be machines. IT, then, is quite capable of making life worse.
Iain McGilchrist, "Resist the Machine," First Things, March 2024
