How exactly does one “balance” technology?
What is there to balance? More importantly, what would one even balance
against? As a man of rigor, I performed an exhaustive, five minute scouring of
the internet and as far as I can tell, there is no antonym for the word
“technology”…and that’s just weird. If we trust the ol’ Oxford English (which,
of course we do) technology is defined as “the
application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in
industry.”
I know…this feels like the start of a
terrible high school humanities essay, but bear with me.
In the absence of a proper yin to
technology’s yang, it can be helpful to break things down and study from the
ground up. At a glance, this definition seems quite innocuous – we conjure
images of early man bashing a wheel onto a cart or using fire to cook meat.
Technology is our friend. Technology has made our lives easier. Technology has
saved us all.
However, if we read the above definition
closely, cross our eyes, hop on one foot, rub our bellies, pat our heads and
let the gravity of these words sink in, we begin to visualize the grossly
intimidating breadth of this word. From the tiniest microchip to the largest
building, the fastest rocket to the slowest-motion camera, technology is no longer
our harmless, quaint little friend; it has evolved into an intricate beast the
likes of which no single human can comprehend in its entirety. Hundreds of
years ago, technological innovators were diverse individuals who were able to
span a number of different disciplines and create new discoveries from the
comfort of their bathtubs. These days, the bleeding edge of most technological
pursuits exists in state-of-the-art laboratories and the minds of only the top
scholars in the world. Breakthroughs have dropped from the realm of popular
noteworthiness because the common person can no longer comprehend the
development of modern technology let alone play a role in it.
Dare I be so bold as to say that in this
day and age, it is impossible to divorce the word technology from the word
complexity?
Not so say that complexity is entirely a
bad thing, however, it muddles the value of our scientific progress and makes
advancements increasingly difficult for businesses to grasp and apply to their
products. Yes, businesses can hire these top scholars to push the envelope of
technological progress, however, until we also have applied design minds to
understand the core value of scientific advancement, we stand to lose much of
that value in translation to a consumer product.
While historically, technology has led to
massive breakthroughs and steps forward in our societal and economic progress,
recent years have felt a lot more like we’ve just been spinning our wheels.
Granted this is a massive oversimplification of a complex ecosystem of gadgets,
organizations and people, however, countless businesses seem to waste
inordinate amounts of time and effort forcing cutting-edge technology into
their products without first properly considering their end goal.
The hypocrisy of an individual such as
myself - a former robotics engineer, gadget junkie and proud owner of more
pieces of computational doohickery than I care to even count let alone admit to
– writing this article is not lost on me. You may question the origins of this
luddite-esque heresy. In fact, this rant is brought to you by one of the most
important adages for all designers and engineers such as myself: K.I.S.S. (Keep
It Simple, Stupid). A true designer knows the value of minimizing complication
for the end-user and in a world where technology is increasingly becoming
defined by complexity, the antonym to technology may just be simplicity.
This article is far from a cry to put a
halt to the exploration and advancement of academic institutions and research
labs around the world – those crazy technocrats may continue to lick batteries
to their hearts content and concoct a world of increasingly superior mouse
traps. However, to the designers and product developers of the world: get your
heads out of your asses. The value of your work is defined not by your ability
to incorporate the greatest amount of next-gen tech into your designs but
instead by your ability to keep things simple enough for people to actually
understand how to use it.
