I bet just a few of you reading this post have ever had the experience of washing laundry by hand. Doing laundry is probably one of the most annoying "house duties" that a person has to perform every few other days and although washing machines are among us for decades I can't be grateful enough for such a machine washing my laundry.
A few times throughout my life I was forced to do it myself and trust it ain't worth it. Long live technology and its positive impact on our mundane days. Technological progress was somehow driven by "convenient minds", though, individuals that prefer getting sucked by a computer screen and code, or designing the future than getting involved in physical stuff, house chores, etc.
You can't swim upstream, thus it is futile to fight technological progress, I once tried that when touchscreen smartphones came out, and I was stubbornly sticking to my Nokia E72 non-touchscreen smartphone. Yes, you could install apps on it, have WhatsApp working properly with it, and snap photos at quite a good resolution, but it was doomed to fail into oblivion.
The same goes for our beloved combustion engine vehicles. As EVs gradually take over the streets the once cheered "sheer driving pleasure" that our fossil fuel engine-powered cars will gradually fade away. EVs are not fun, though... They don't roar, you don't feel the engine, you have no "human connection" basically with the car and on top of that they're designed to become self-driving too...
That's a double spend there... I already saw a piece of news the other day of some ugly piece of shit EV that didn't even have a steering wheel. We're gradually being turned into passengers and I'm not excited about it at all. EVs for the streets are like smartphones at a party, both of them steal the moment and the joy that comes with it.
Hangouts are half lived, "half typed and posted online". I know... The Nokia 3310 that I owned as my first mobile phone, when I was a teenager, would have not been able to take me "everywhere in the world" as a damn touchscreen smartphone did. But on the other hand, I kind of became a slave of the screen thanks to smartphones.
The metaverse is upon us and that will only make things worse. Before jumping at my throat let me state my case for what I mean by "making things worse". It's not like our lives will become a living hell, like we're gonna be poorer, less healthy, and more depressed once this realm gains traction, although that might happen as well.
By worse, I'm actually pointing out at "noninvolvement" which is somehow derived from convenience. Having an office in the metaverse instead of a physical one and connecting with your employees/team through some VR goggles and headphones is going to be highly convenient, but not much involving. I mean, living like this for hours in a row in a day doesn't make you too involved in actual living and experiencing life and the material stuff around us.
Now, imagine that after these good hours spent in the metaverse working, some dude living this way decides that he's better with spending his free time now in the metaverse playing games, and interacting with all sorts of social media virtual realities inside that same realm, while dating "avatars he will never meet in real life"... And when he's done with that all he's left with is some uber eats and a few hours of sleep before starting it all over again.
Dudes back in the days, the majority still doing it now too, were driving miles and miles to go to work, were communicating with their work mates eye to eye, and were getting their hands into dirt constantly. Now we see offices that have no longer reopened after the covid pandemic ended, and employees that prefer remote work to the regular jobs they used to have and this is just the beginning.
Everything starts with convenience and ends with lethargy. Don't get me wrong, I love technology, and I live off technology for a couple of years, but man I sure love doing small reparations on my car, doing house duties, getting in touch with people, and spending time outdoors. I wouldn't trade this for a "digital life" even if the trade would be worth billions. Remember, convenience = noninvolvement, and noninvolvement sucks...
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian