The Age of “Smart” Tech and “Dumb” People

Technological advancements, over the past decades, have had the improvement of human life as the main focus. They have allowed us as species to survive and even thrive in dangerous and hostile environments.

So many of these advancements have allowed us to create modern cities in which every basic human need has been met, resulting in a steady increase in life expectancy.

And yet, despite all these improvements, we’ve reached a point in which the pace of technological change has far surpassed our human ability to adapt. This has led to what I call “the age of smart technology and dumb people”.

Let’s take a closer look at it.

Content Overview

• Silicon Valley and its mantras
• The loss of our roots
• “If you don’t use it, you lose it”
• Adding a barrel of oil to the fire
• It’s all a balancing act
• Conclusion

Silicon Valley and its mantras

In the startup world, there’s this phrase that says “every problem is a business opportunity”. This sentiment, coupled with the competitive nature of startups, VC funding, and desires to be the “next big thing”, has created a dangerous combination.

It led to a culture of trying to create tech products to solve anything that remotely resembles a problem in our way of life.

The thinking is something along the lines of…

Find a big problem or pain that people have →

come up with an “innovative“ way of solving it →

market it as the best solution to the problem and the path to an ideal life →

get several customers or VC funding →

make tons of money!

There are tech companies that have indeed made our lives better with their products. But we don’t have that many “big” problems that can prove to be a goldmine for prospective entrepreneurs.

So, not wanting to be left behind, these other folks took small problems, inconveniences, and nuisances (not really problems) and labeled them as “big issues that need solving”.

I even heard once someone making the point that the startups that have become very successful and even went public were because they focused on exploiting one of the 7 Deadly Sins.

Something like:

Tinder → Lust

Doordash → Gluttony

Instagram → Envy

Uber → Sloth

And so on…

But you might be thinking, “well that’s not so bad, at least they’re fulfilling their promise and solving a need“.

And you would be right, except that if you take that argument all the way without thinking of the consequences, you can find nasty outcomes and even downright disasters.

Here are just 2 examples:

1. Juicero: A startup that created an expensive juicing machine. But it was discovered that the juice packets sold by Juicero could be squeezed just as effectively by hand, rendering the expensive machine unnecessary and raising questions about the company's integrity and its impact on consumer spending.

   
   

2. Theranos: A health-tech startup that claimed to have developed a revolutionary blood-testing technology. This was later revealed that the technology did not work as advertised, causing harm to patients who relied on inaccurate test results.

Silicon Valley's history is filled with examples of this type of unethical behavior at varying degrees.

It seems that, at this point, the goal of startups is no longer just profiting from solving problems but also from exploiting human weaknesses.

The loss of our roots

Another reason for this paradox…

The people affected by it live in big cities, are from the middle all the way to high class, and live super comfortably with all their needs met and with extra time for leisure activities.

And it’s their parents or grandparents, the ones who lived in the countryside and knew how to solve problems whenever things went wrong.

What do most of them do now?

They search on Google or look for a video on YouTube that talks about their problem and offers one (or more) solution(s).

But take away their access to the internet for once and see them going into “panic mode”.

When did this happen? One of the key traits that make us human is our adaptability and bias for survival.

But too much "smart tech" has blunted our instincts.

Now, I'm not saying that we should go back to the nomadic age or sell everything to live on a farm. But we overdid the "easy & comfortable" part. We have to take back control and balance it out.

It’s crazy to think that in many major cities, there are kids and teens that believe that food comes from a supermarket, or that milk comes from a box. Nevermind the fact that they’ve never seen a farm before and go into shock if you tell them where the chicken breast actually comes from.

All these “smart” devices, although super convenient, have made us forget what we are and where we come from.

Traditional skills and abilities from our parents and grandparents are now fading away. And it’s important for us to bring them back and foster them.

Not only because of their traditional value but also to share them with our kids.

There’s a stronger reason why.

“If you don’t use it, you lose it“

In our fast-paced and constantly connected world, there’s a ton of information and more data than we can process at any time.

Our mental software hasn’t evolved as fast as technology, leaving us with a couple of “glitches” and less-than-optimal situations.

And the brain, in its rush to keep us alive and well, makes compromises that lead to undesirable outcomes.

For example, the use of “shortcuts” to make sense of information and arrive at conclusions. Or prioritizing commonly repeated activities over more important but less used ones.

When the knowledge and human intuition required to perform certain tasks get replaced by technology, guess what happens to them in the long run…

They disappear.

The brain has this process called “synaptic pruning”.

This is part of its cleanup routines to throw away what is no longer useful and conserve what’s important.

Scientists believed this only happened to kids and teens during their growing process. But more recent research shows the brain has an incredible capacity to rewire itself through “neuroplasticity”.

We never intended to lose our basic human skills due to technology or automation. And that’s exactly what’s happening because we stop doing these activities to favor comfort and dare I say, laziness.

Now, almost everything in a typical American house is “smart”. Even things that are not supposed to. And when you have smart appliances, you don’t have to think too much because they do it for you.

A smart fridge that can know what kind of food is available and tell when it’s turning bad or when you’ll need more supplies? ✅.

A smart washing machine that can take clothes and do the whole cycle for you? ✅.

A smart dishwasher that will take all your plates and have them ready for use again? ✅.

A smart oven, smart set of lights, smart kettle, smart bed, even a smart water bottle?

Where are we going to end when everything becomes “smart”?

What if those devices turn against us?

Nahhh that’s too sci-fi. It would never happen.

No one can get their smart home turned against them.

Suffice it to say that if you become overly dependent on technology and “smart” devices, it’ll be so easy to shut down your livelihood with something as simple as a power outage or an EMP. (Remember what happened in Ocean’s Eleven.)

Adding a barrel of oil to the fire

As if these issues are not problematic enough, people have become reliant on electronics to the point of not knowing how to do things by themselves.

The movie WALL-E was very prophetic.

We now have people “outsourcing” their thinking to other systems.

Yes. I’m talking about “artificial intelligence”.

I find it ironic that technology progressively made us dumber and dumber to the point that we now need external intelligence because there’s not enough “human intelligence” anymore.

These systems get better with our use of them so they eventually will become good enough to understand what we’re trying to say without us even asking proper questions.

It wasn't enough for people to have unrestricted access to the internet pretty much 24/7 with their smartphone to the point that many started using it as a “second brain”. Nevermind the effects that it creates.

Now, there’s even ChatGPT as a native app for your smartphone.

I guess now you could say, that one is a “third brain” readily available for use.

Does having more than one “brain” solve problems or create more? Only time will tell. What we know now is that external brains don’t play well with our God-given ones.

And if that trend continues, it’s not hard to see, later on, people who are no longer able to communicate with others without external help from an AI.

That is only one example of what can happen if we keep going down this path.

But it doesn't have to be all “doom and gloom”. We have much more power and control than we realize, it’s about time we take it and steer the future towards a better direction.

It’s all a balancing act

We humans tend to go to extremes in everything and so if it’s not one side, then it’s the other. (One of those glitches of our mental software.)

It’s possible to find a middle point between being completely dependent on our devices and being Amish.

We can use technology to help improve our workflow and automate some repetitive stuff while still being in control.

It’s like that situation back in college where some teachers banned the use of calculators in exams.

The thinking was that if we rely too much on using one, we weren’t doing the process ourselves and not learning anything.

I had one teacher that instead of talking about integrals, for example, would talk about where they come from as the approximation of the area under a curve.

He will then give us some formulas that would make calculating integrals much easier and all that was without ever touching a calculator.

With that, his students will turn into “calculating machines” while people in other classes would have to rely on calculators to try and keep up.

The same can be said about using “smart” devices and AI.

They’re there to help you in your daily activities, not to make you forget about how they’re done in the first place.

Here are some actions you can take to counter that.

Start doing things without external help on a particular day.

Automate repetitive tasks, but take one day a week and do those tasks by yourself.

Doing this, not only gives you a better perspective on the difference between relying on external means and doing it by yourself. It also helps you realize how much you can actually do if you put yourself to it.

Set technology use “policies”. What can and won’t be done with technology?

This will sound “impossible” for folks who have hectic schedules and need to squeeze every single minute out of the day. And if that’s your case, you need to step back and reassess where you’re going (to burn out statistically).

Stop multitasking, that doesn’t make you more productive or perform better.

In fact, it does the opposite.

Introduce some mindfulness and meditation techniques. Set a specific time every day when you will shut off all devices and spend that time winding down or being present with your family.

All of these are good ways to get started taking back your power and control from “the robots”.

What you want is to be at a point where you can either do things by yourself or use technology to do it faster and spend that extra time outdoors, with your family, or taking time for yourself.

Conclusion

It’s a slippery slope to say what’s “good” and “bad”.

All over human history, we can see folks who have praised technological inventions and been idealistic about their use. And also others have tried to demonize those same technologies saying they create more problems and difficulties than their supposed benefits.

The point is not to be in one camp or the other. It’s about finding the balance and taking the best from both sides.

These tech devices can help make our lives easier, improve efficiency, and help us to not drown in a sea of minutiae.

But it’s important that we don’t always take “the path of least resistance” because the brain is a complex machine that will always prioritize saving energy, spending less effort, and keeping us safe. And so, if you give it the option, it will always choose the easy way.

That’s why we must strike that balance between using tech tools so that we aren’t making everything harder than it should but at the same time not becoming lazy “couch potatoes” that can’t do anything by themselves.

At the end of the day, the goal of technology is to help us survive and thrive in a hostile world where there have always been all kinds of illnesses, harsh environmental conditions, savage beasts, and other enemies to us as species.

Let’s exercise self-control, recover ancestral knowledge, and build self-reliance so that we can be better prepared for any new challenges of the coming decades.