Technology does not automatically mean progress

At the last company meetup, I noticed how many notifications one of my colleagues received. His phone or Apple Watch made a sound almost constantly: the New York Times, a tweet, an email, another email and finally HomeKit reporting movement in his flat, where his parents were staying at the time.

I do not understand how anyone can function like that.

I have notifications disabled for almost every app. Signal, iMessage, Mail and Things may show a badge on their icons, but I do not want my phone to make sounds, vibrate or light up its display. Notifications are completely disabled for my work Slack and email.

That does not mean I ignore them. When I want to know what is new on Slack, I open Slack. When I want to check my email, I open Mail. The only difference is that I choose when to look, rather than letting an app choose for me.

Perhaps I am more sensitive to interruptions than most people. However, the idea of an electronic device vibrating on my wrist every few minutes because a new article has appeared or someone has posted something seems completely absurd to me.

A watch that tells the time

I owned an Apple Watch myself. I bought a Series 2 as a technology enthusiast, but sold it after less than two years and went back to traditional watches.

Today, I own several mechanical watches. They tell the time, look good, and some have interesting movements or particularly fine craftsmanship. I do not have to charge them every night, install updates or figure out why something is vibrating on my wrist.

Most importantly, they do not ask anything of me. When I want to know the time, I look at them. Otherwise, they leave me alone.

I do not miss the Apple Watch, and most new smart devices do not appeal to me either. Not because I am opposed to technology. I simply need to see a clear benefit that outweighs the additional maintenance they bring.

Not everything needs to be smart

I feel the same way about smart-home devices. I do not own any smart light bulbs, plugs, locks or cloud-connected motion sensors.

When I want to turn on a light, I press the switch on the wall. It works instantly and requires no internet connection, account or firmware update. I do not have to wonder whether the manufacturer will still be running the necessary servers five years from now, or find my phone and open an app.

There are, of course, situations where home automation makes sense. But I think we have grown used to treating the addition of technology as an improvement in itself. We take an ordinary object that has worked reliably for decades, add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an app, a user account and a cloud service, and call the result smart.

The first thing I want to know about such a product is what problem it actually solves. If the only result is a more complicated way to turn on a light, I would rather stick with the switch.

Technology as the default answer

I noticed this difference in thinking most clearly during the COVID pandemic. Various technological ideas for solving the problem appeared very quickly. The proposals included tracking people’s locations, recording whom they came into contact with and knowing where everyone had been and whom they had met.

My first reaction was not excitement, but concern about what such a solution would mean for privacy.

Apple and Google eventually developed a much more sensible Bluetooth-based system that did not require everyone’s location to be tracked centrally. Technology could therefore form part of the solution without creating an infrastructure for monitoring the entire population.

What stayed with me, however, was that initial instinct. We have a problem, so we must solve it with technology.

Technology may be the right answer, but it may not. A technological solution often fixes one problem while creating several new ones. We then accept those new problems simply because the result feels modern.

The more I work with software, the more cautious I become

It is a little ironic, considering that I make my living from software. I have spent most of my professional life programming. I like computers and use an iPhone, a MacBook and plenty of other electronics. I build my own apps and certainly do not want to throw away my phone and move to the woods.

But my experience developing software is exactly what has made me more cautious about new technology. I know what it means to add software to something that did not need it before.

Software contains bugs and requires updates. APIs change, servers are shut down and companies fail or get acquired. A free service may introduce a subscription, an account can be blocked and old hardware eventually loses support.

Every additional smart device therefore introduces another small dependency and another thing that requires attention. An ordinary light switch has none of those problems.

That does not mean I reject products like these. I want such products to solve a specific problem, and I want to decide when to use them. If an ordinary solution works just as well, I see no reason to replace it with a smart version.