Our laziness is the No.1 driver of technological progress

No matter what image of humanity shapes your thinking, you will agree with me that people always like to have it as easy and good as possible. Be that on a large or small scale. We don’t really like to leave our comfort zone. Anything that helps us to improve our situation is always something we take a look at. If we achieve these improvements without having to break out of our comfort zone, we have usually almost won the person over for something.

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Collective comfort zone

You’ll tell me no, I don’t see it that way, because there are people who are completely different. They like to have a hard time. And yes, you’re probably right. These people do exist. That’s because there is no consensus on a consciously defined collective comfort zone. Everyone has different preferences. That’s why there are always exceptions. And people who would like things to be different. But we also have areas where we have almost 100% agreement. The simplest example: severe physical pain is outside the personal comfort zone for almost everyone.

Intelligent things

In my article “The Internet will disappear! Get over it.” I explained that over time, we will equip many things in our daily lives with computing power and a database. And that these things will then gradually anticipate our expectations and anticipate them accordingly. And that this “intelligence” created in this way will slowly but surely disappear from our perception. And that these things will become common property to a certain extent.

The comments on this article make fascinating reading. I found the following things striking:

Make sense

“Man has learned to do sensible things. But they have not yet learned to stop doing nonsensical things. Apart from that, the question is whether the resources are available and whether we want to use them for this.”

Jörg Ribbecke, on LinkedIn

I agree with that from my personal point of view. I also find a lot of things nonsensical, especially the new “innovations” that are being created.

“There is probably something like a collective consciousness about what makes sense to us or not. We are at the mercy of this as individuals, even though we are part of it.”

But if I try to broaden my horizon and go back a little in history, I don’t find so many things that don’t make sense. It is more the case that new innovations and technologies are also subject to Darwinism. Those products and services that make sense for people will prevail, the others will not.

But that doesn’t mean that these innovations have to make sense for everyone.

Underestimated technology – once again

Other comments address the reliability and functioning of such intelligent things. I can follow the argument, but I don’t share it at all. After all, there is already a lot of technology that we rely on 100% and that is also practically 100% available.

For example, the water supply, which is also simply a technological achievement, is now so unconsciously available in the western world that we only notice it when it doesn’t work. Which in Switzerland feels like once every 40 years. Where exactly does the water come from? How it is managed? What processes are behind it? I have no idea. Mainly because it’s completely irrelevant to my life.

These examples are numerous and there is no question that new technologies will undergo a corresponding development over time in order to achieve this status. But we can’t really imagine that at the moment. Just as the squire in the Middle Ages could not imagine that one day water would simply be available everywhere and at all times.

The invisible hand – in fact and truth our laziness?

Economists are probably gasping for breath at this statement. It will happen a few more times in the next few years of perpetual disruption… But first things first:

When people want to be moved out of their comfort zone as little as possible, this can be described as a kind of laziness. Not the kind of laziness that is discredited, that simply doesn’t want to move anything at all. But we are true masters at achieving as much as possible with as little effort as possible. On the one hand, we are lazy in this sense. On the other hand, we are also insatiable and to a certain extent uncompromising when it comes to making things even easier. There is no other way to explain pre-peeled eggs in the supermarket. (Discussion of values follows later in the article. All good ;-))

Again, this doesn’t have to apply to every single individual, but I think it applies to us as a species as a whole. In that sense, it is the number one driver of all our endeavors. And what ultimately makes sense for us as a whole, we decide according to a simple try-and-error process. The levels of this evaluation are a) the economy, for the allocation of resources to solve a problem, b) politics, for finding social consensus, and c) religion/philosophy, for balancing the ethical radicalization of new ideas and innovations.

And the invisible hand as a self-regulating element for the efficient allocation of resources, well, it sits on the arm of laziness. I think we need to move away from these isolated concepts that simply fall short, and yes, I studied economics.

Values and laws are aggregate states of the development process

I think we are therefore relatively unaffected by long-term technological developments. Sooner or later, we will accept anything that helps us to make life easier, better and more pleasant. The changes are sometimes radical and mentally unmanageable for individuals.

This is the moment when we hear sentences like “I don’t want to live like this”. I find such statements very legitimate and, of course, in certain areas I also take them out for myself. But circumstances and conditions change. And new people are born every day who are just starting out on what we have today – both materially and immaterially.

Values and laws are initially only a kind of transitional regulator. They are constantly changing and will continue to do so. And that is a good thing, because otherwise we would not be able to implement these long-term changes for the better.

“The “better” of today is the “good” of tomorrow”

If you don’t believe that, you don’t have to go far back to challenge your attitude. Spend an afternoon in a state archive (Swiss federal archives) and read through old (150+ years) court decisions. Most of this case law is not compatible with our current values.

The pressure decides

But you will also make huge leaps in your personal life, even within one lifetime, if you are forced to do so. The pressure just has to be high enough. My often-used favorite example: Imagine you are completely against genetic engineering. You reject everything about it, defining it as a kind of core value not to allow anything genetically modified into your life.

And now your child becomes life-threateningly ill and the only method to cure it would be based on genetic engineering. They can replace genetic engineering with anything they think is bad. Now… How would you decide? What would you do now?