The best answer is, yes. There is no doubt technology has given us the ability to communicate better, organize faster and allow us to not worry about a whole host of logistical issues.
I know there are a lot of people that talk about our quality of life being squeezed out by technology, but my feeling at the end of the day, is technology has improved our lives. It has improved it by giving us better communication choices and allowing us to act quicker on those choices.
Let’s delve a bit on the gripes that people have who feel they have been slighted by our new age of technology. I think their main concern falls into the two category; One of having to work around the clock and a dread of always being hyper-connected, never able to break free from the work life or nobody having real human interactions and more virtual twitter obsessed existence.
I think for those sorts of criticism, I basically say nobody is forcing anyone to be so obsessed. People can or cannot use technology as they wish, and if working around the clock or never being “detached” is what they want, then more power to them. I believe some balance is probably in order, but who am I to say what that balance is.
As far as the things we take for granted now because of technology, simple integration of phone, calendar event, location and GPS, has made visiting a new client, about as simple as it can get. Notification tells me when I should head out, the address on the phone tells me where to go and the GPS gets me there, it is hard to believe things worked any differently.
At the work environment the ability to communicate via email, track conversations that way, store and share documents, research on the Internet and basically automate a number of tasks via the computer once again proven that technology has improved our work flow.
I know I’ve only scratched the surface of this discussion, but as I have introduced new technology to clients, I can see the light in their eyes as they see how much easier it will make their life, I’ve also seen the devastation when something stops working and they cannot function anymore. The bottom line is technology will march forward so really is it worth trying to fight it?