That is or has been the promise for most of the information technology we are using.

Well, it looks as if either the promise was not fulfilled or I misunderstood it.

This is not to say that I want to get rid of IT. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Modern technology has scaled the options and possibilities available to us. There is so much more that is possible than in the past. When I stayed for a year in the US, communication with my family happened via snail mail. E-Mail was not available at the time and having a long-distance call was too expensive. So we never talked or saw each other during that time. Today, it hardly costs anything anymore, and having video calls is a standard. Families disconnect much less than it happened at the time.

The same is true within organizations.

Now, it is expected that others can be reached within a few minutes and that a response will be there immediately.

But it’s not only that. Nowadays, we expect almost everything to be available with just a few clicks. The train ticket, the application for new insurance, reserving all the hotels for the next holiday, etc.

The number of options available to us brings the need for decisions, informing oneself to be able to make choices, searching for possibilities just in case the service is available, etc.

Where we would ask service agents to organize this for us in the past, we find ourselves having to figure these things out on our own.

We’ve moved away from a time in which needs were limited by availability and accessibility. And we’ve reached a time where there seem to be nothing limiting needs anymore.

That is apart from our personal ability to be able to deal with all those needs and fulfilling them. Learning to do so is one of the many reasons for the existence of self-help and self-development literature.

If it doesn’t make life easier, then the question thus might be more about what price we are willing to pay for the convenience of the limitless possibilities we gained through technology.