How Technology Is Stealing Our Time

On the effects of counterproductivity, and how better technology consumes more time than it saves.

Once upon a time, women were forced to spend all their time burdened with housework. But then, to their rescue came technology. With the creation of vacuum cleaners, dishwashers and washing machines, technology liberated women and gave them more time to focus on what they really cared about. Except, it didn’t. It actually did the opposite.

As Ruth Cowan revealed in her book “More Work For Mother”, the amount of time women spend cleaning the house has remained the same since before the industrial revolution.

“How is that possible?”, you’re probably thinking.

“Didn’t technology make chores way more efficient and less time-consuming?”

And you’d be right. Since the beginning of civilisation, technology has allowed humans to do more with less. But an often forgotten fact is that while it does make work easier, technology creates new work by changing who does the work and raising the standards to which it is done.

The Curious Case Of Counterproductivity

The Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich coined the term counterproductivity to describe the…