Free Up

It's possible that technology is making us more rude.

I'm not a luddite or against the general vibe of the whole tech world.  Yes, there's plenty of useless stuff out there but I'm heavily in favor of us keeping at it.  There's some smart, helpful stuff along with the stupid stuff no one needs.

I don't think it's just me but isn't there a vision of how a technologically advanced society is supposed to be more refined?  If all of life's mundane tasks are automated, we'll supposedly be better off not having to distract ourselves from more important things.

I'm finding the opposite to be true.  I know there was an animated movie some time ago about how a fully automated society made everyone fat and lazy (I mean... of course) but I think you can just about prove scientifically that society is more rude now than it was 50 years ago.  We've never lived in a Utopia, but people randomly flipped fewer cars over back then.  I kind of wonder if the ability to indulge in this sort of behavior might come from having too much free time.  

"Man - I'd love to flip that car with you guys but I gotta go buy some food to cook for dinner."

Well now you can have food delivered to you just about anytime, anywhere simply by tapping a few things on your screen.  That chore otherwise occupied a certain amount of brain space, and that space has now been freed up.  Of course you don't have to flip cars and you don't have to order food, but there are a great number of things in life that have been similarly simplified, freeing up previously occupied brain space.

That space isn't always being filled in ways we might hope for.  Or maybe I should say it isn't really giving dumb people more time to study.  Sorry - that was rude.