Time- Saving Technologies

The more timesaving inventions we own, the less time we have

In my essay I tried to focus on the problems of utilization of leisure time. There is no doubt that our world is constantly changing. Nowadays, modern technologies take up very important place in our lives.

“The last couple of decades have witnessed a formidable growth of various time-saving technologies, ranging from advanced multi-level time managers to e-mail, voicemail, mobile telephones and word processors; and yet millions of us have never had so little time to spare as now. It may seem as if we are unwittingly being enslaved by the very technology that promised liberation. Changes which ostensibly boost efficiency and creativity may in fact do the exact opposite.” (Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Tyranny of the moment. London: Pluto Press, 2001)

Despite the fact that we have thanks to modern technologies access to a large array of information, that all of the generations before us could certainly envied us, still we are not wiser, but more confused. It does not mean that the more we know, the more we understand the world and the things around us. We have only more options than the previous generations. The aim of this work is not to find the arguments, why take a stand against progress and information society, but it is also important to understand its unintended consequences.

2. History

Nowadays, there are many writings, referring to this issue. Thus, to what extent perfect instruments we have, and how much less we manifest our own effort in searching of new information, we will cease to develop our own ideas, and we become the only beings consuming foreign opinion. As Eriksen claims, in our society, everything is running at high speed, but only a few things are actually moving forward. A lot of new things wait for us every day and we have to deal with them. The company is becoming more consumerist; because it just takes the information published anywhere. Thanks to the commonness and the system of modern technologies, only a few people consider about their actual content.

In order to move on, we have to recall the basic historical context. As I have described above, the problem of our society is particularly its general acceleration. As remind Eriksen, this is connected with the invention of the telegraph and the steam engine. As well as these inventions affect the life of the inhabitants at the time of its expansion, resources to help you work affect life in the present time. People, who work in the field of information technologies and are directly affected by this progress, live in constant haste and with a sense that their working hours are overcrowded and the time scrappy. The pace is so high that, in many cases, it affects family life. Another example is the invention of the typewriter, whose original meaning was only facilitating the writing strongly visually impaired people. Yet his discovery increases the number of texts, which publishing became simpler. Once again, however, this is a type of progress, which leads society to a further and even greater acceleration. To get nearer in the past, we discover the age of computers. For a few years has spread to nearly every office, some people even had the opportunity to have it at home. Ten years later, it was also a rapid expansion of the internet. In the last twenty years, the Czech Republic has been also changed in almost all areas. Also interest in modern technologies grew up. In the last two decades, the internet became one of the most widely used means of communication between humans.

“Between 2005- 2009, in the Czech Republic almost doubled the number of its users (32% in 2005 and 60% in 2009). The number of users increased throughout the European Union (65% in 2009). Email has been in the last 5 years the most popular form of communication on the internet. In 2005, through her to interact with 84% of users, with a growing number of Internet users has been growing the number of email users (in 2009 it is send 91% of Internet users, 88% of the EU total). The United States, Canada and the Scandinavian countries rank among the countries with the highest proportion of users. And the availability of information from any place of the globe is one of the cognitive characters of the information society.”(Eurostat, Community survey on ICT usage in households and by individuals, 2010)

3. The power of information technologies

Information technologies and technologies are very important in all types of production. Let's imagine. One day, we would be separated from all the inventions of the last few decades. Let's have a think about what would happen if all the computers in the world stopped working. It would be a huge problem in hospitals, airports, we ourselves could feel it extensively in daily life. The fact that we are totally dependent on modern technologies is indisputable. When we talk about the information society, it should be mentioned how this society affects in many ways so many people who are in it. In the introduction I have already mentioned that in our surrounding is a vast amount of information with which we must cope every day. We are not suffering from “hunger for information”, rather the contrary. We have so much of information, and what is the most difficult, the ability to choose the ones that are really important. How easily distinguish the information relevant from the irrelevant, the useful from the useless.

4. Fast- moving times

Despite the fact that day of each of us has 24 hours, only a few of us use his free time truly effectively. Here we can see the side effects of modern technologies. As Eriksen says, the generation of our parents grew up with a few television programs, but the television today is thanks to the diversity of channels completely different. Not really at the end of the last century no one could have argued that the most active users of mobile phones will be in a few years’ young people. We have unlimited possibilities, so many ways how to be informed. The problem remains that the information published on the Internet make extremely dense and unclear "network“, which is constantly growing. The unintended consequence of this system is the fact that the more diverse articles about everything are available to us, the less we understand the true nature of each problem. As Eriksen proclaims, if there were fewer articles, we had more time for each and we could become real experts on the issue. It is possible to think quickly, but some of the ideas may arise only when you are ruminating with slowness. Slow time is not the same as a lot of the time. Read and understand moderately long poem will not take more than a couple of minutes, but you need to do it slowly. It is a problem of today's hurried time. We are coming back to the introductory sentence of this paragraph, which draws attention to the possibilities of utilization of time. How we can ideally spread that 24 hours. As evidence the scientific researches, most of us use only a fraction of their time effectively. That divides people into successful and unsuccessful. The better use of our time means that we are more productive and our work is more efficient.

5. Work efficiency

„Effectiveness is the capability of producing a desired result. When something is deemed effective, it means it has an intended or expected outcome, or produces a deep, vivid impression.“ http://en.wikipedia.org

It is time for the question. Does life in the information society with highly developed technologies truly brings the work efficiency. In my opinion, modern technologies are extremely important, and in many aspects make work easier, but sometimes ironically lead to the phenomenon when the technology of efficiency is against his original intention. For clarification, the invention of the mobile phone saves us undoubtedly a lot of time. In other words, it ensures flexibility and control. Unfortunately, and it reminds Eriksen, this type of flexibility, which raises the expectation that everybody can be reached anytime and anywhere. As Eriksen says, as long as is a few callers, the technique works as a great helper, saving time and labor. But in time when the number of callers exceeds a fixed threshold, the result is opposite.

Conclusion

“It has been computed by some political arithmetician that if every man and woman would work for four hours each day on something useful, that labour would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life … and the rest of the 24 hours might be leisure and happiness.” http://blogs.reuters.com

Benjamin Franklin dreamed about technological progress in 18th century, he believed in humanity progress, but he was mistaken. Despite the fact that the human race makes great headway in technologies, we work more and more and we have less free time.
Our imagination of real values, real liberty, is mainly connected with money and success. Thomas N. Carver asks the question: “Is it better to give priority to increasing prosperity, or leisure time?” In my opinion, many people share belief that the first variant is better. Many people prefer make money at the expanse of their free time. And if they decided to spend their leisure time, they often only watch television to the exclusion of improves own personality. Nowadays, we have access to a large array of information, but we have because of ubiquitous technologies problems to find enough time to deal with them. There are again the unintended consequences of modern technologies. Computer may save our time, work; but very important condition for success is the continuous concentration on things we want. Refuse to be distracted by the technologies and things around us. To sum it up, the timesaving inventions facilitate our work, but it is often to the exclusion of our time.

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