Technology Keeps Promising Simplicity and Delivering Homework

Every new piece of technology arrives with the same promise: this will make your life easier. Fewer steps. Less effort. Total freedom. Somehow it always delivers the opposite. What used to take one button now requires an app, a login, an update, a password reset, and a tutorial video narrated by someone half your age who calls everything “intuitive.”

We didn’t ask for our refrigerators to be online or our doorbells to need software patches, but here we are, troubleshooting appliances like they’re coworkers. Nothing just works anymore. It all needs syncing, optimizing, and occasional emotional reassurance. If you don’t keep up, it’s framed as a personal failure, as if you’re the problem for wanting a light switch to behave like a light switch.

The real trick is how this gets sold as progress. Complexity wrapped in a clean design, inconvenience rebranded as innovation. Technology didn’t simplify life — it just moved the frustration into smaller screens and convinced us we should be grateful for the privilege.