Does technological advancement really make us happy, or is it time to recapture our lost emotions?

This article raises the question of whether technological advancement makes us happy, reflects on the current direction of technological advancement in pursuit of convenience, and emphasizes the need for new technologies that can bring back our emotions.

 

Recently, I re-watched one of my favorite movies, WALL-E. “WALL-E is a movie about a robot and his love for a woman left alone on a garbage-filled planet. It’s a beautiful, funny movie that still holds up well on rewatch. However, this time around, I felt differently about the movie.
The movie shows humans abandoning a polluted Earth and living in a spaceship where everything is automated. What caught my eye was how people didn’t look at each other, but only talked to the person next to them through the screen. Back in 2008, when the movie came out, it seemed like a ridiculous, overblown sci-fi future. But here we are in 2024, and it’s no longer a movie fantasy. Our cell phones have been replaced by smartphones, and we’re glued to those little screens all day long. Facebook has made it easier and more convenient for people to stay in touch, but it’s also made the person next to you more distant. It’s not uncommon to see people sitting across from each other in a cafe, staring at their phones. “Until the movie WALL-E came out, it was unthinkable to have a conversation without looking at each other’s faces, but now it’s not uncommon to see friends and not see each other’s faces. Worries about the distant future, which were once considered only speculation, have become a reality much sooner than I thought. And in the midst of all of this, I found myself asking myself a simple question. Does technological progress make us happier?
We all know the answer to that clichéd question. It’s not that technology doesn’t make us happy. In fact, while smartphones have made our lives very convenient, it’s hard to say that they’ve made us happier. But knowing that doesn’t change anything. The questions and discussions about where technology was headed were still being asked and discussed, and in the meantime, the future we feared was already upon us. The things we think of as far-off and exaggerated may become our reality while we’re still asking the same old questions and answering the same old answers. Indeed, the genetically determined society depicted in the movie Gattaca or the novel Brave New World is no longer the stuff of science fiction. We need to think more carefully about technological advances. It’s not about the distant future, it’s about the here and now.
So, what is technological progress for? Technology has basically evolved in the pursuit of convenience. Technology is constantly evolving to make life easier for humans, and as a result, we live in a society where many things are automated and convenient. But is this development in the right direction? Do these technologies make us happy, and if not, what direction should they take?
Happiness is relative, not absolute. Today’s technology provides us with tremendous convenience, but once we get used to it, we stop feeling happy from it. It becomes something that we take for granted. In fact, when elevators first appeared, people may have been happy with their convenience, but now it’s more common for people to become irritated while waiting for an elevator. In this way, the convenience of technology never brings us ultimate happiness. Rather, we feel unhappy when the convenience is gone, so simply pursuing convenience in favor of something more practical is not the ultimate goal of technology. What we need for our happiness is not more convenient technology. It’s our emotions that make us happy, but we’re already so blinded by technology that we’ve lost touch with our emotions. Therefore, I believe that the technology from now on should not be a technology for convenience, but a technology to find our emotions that have been covered by the rapid development of technology.
“In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu advocates the pursuit of nature. We shouldn’t force ourselves to do things, but live with the flow of nature. And I agree with her. Of course, the civilization that humans have built by fighting against nature has provided us with tremendous benefits. But that doesn’t mean that just because I live in a more technologically advanced world, I think I’m living a happier life than my ancestors who lived in less advanced times. On the contrary, we may be living slower, less relaxed, and unhappier lives because of our excessive technology. In fact, the recent retro craze shows us that we are nostalgic for a time when technology was less advanced, but more relaxed and emotional. But just because we’re nostalgic for those days doesn’t mean we should throw away our phones and go back to carrying a beeper. We are too accustomed to our cell phones. For the same reason, I don’t advocate abandoning civilization altogether and returning to nature just because I agree with Lao Tzu’s no-man’s land. It would make us unhappy to abandon the conveniences we’ve come to take for granted and return to inconvenience. Instead, I believe that the future of technology shouldn’t just be about cutting-edge and advancement, but also about reconnecting with our sensibilities that have been lost in civilization. What we need is not a faster cell phone. We need a phone that can find the number of a long-lost friend on our phone and remind us of them, or tell us to go for a walk on a clear day and look at the sky. That’s technology as an ally that makes us happy and helps us find our emotions.
Perhaps our attitudes are the reason why technology has evolved so far in the direction of convenience. Sure, it’s allowed us to build a huge civilization in a short amount of time, but it’s time to take a look around and see what we’ve missed while we’ve been piling on the technology. The internet, laptops, and cell phones have allowed us to work while on a moving bus, but they’ve also meant that we no longer get to see the scenery outside the window or talk to the people we’re riding with. It’s time for us to reclaim what we’ve lost in technological advancement. And to do that, we need to think seriously about where technology is headed. We need to think about what the ultimate purpose of technological advancement is.