by Jeffrey Ober

Created on: January 06, 2010   Last Updated: January 08, 2010

Technology has advanced rapidly over the past decade around the world. Computers have gotten more powerful and rapidly decreased in size, giving us the capability of putting computers and computer controls in nearly every device we use. Because of the reduction in production costs, we have put computers everywhere, even where they're not needed. However, this expansion of computers has actually made things more difficult and confusing to people and has increased the amount of time wasted in various tasks.

For example, look at purchasing an automobile. Decades ago, the process was quite simple. Computers and technology were not involved, and the entire process took just a few minutes – the purchaser signed a couple pieces of paper (the title and loan agreement), and they were on their way. Today when you purchase a car, the financing and paperwork process can take many hours. Huge amounts of paperwork are printed and the purchaser has to sign dozens and dozens of papers to complete the new, technologically-improved process.

Computers have created another set of requirements for workers – which has led to a great deal of time that has to be spent learning how to provide instructions to those computers. Computers cannot do anything that people do not already know how to do – so when a person has to work out the instructions that are required to tell a computer how to do something that we already know how to do, how does that save anyone any time?

The Internet itself, a huge technological advancement, has led to hours and hours of wasted time. Many people spend hours and hours each day checking their e-mail (most of which is spam) and checking and updating their social networking sites. This has no real value – does it really matter that you know that Aunt Jane is shoveling her sidewalk at just this moment? The Internet has also given rise to a huge number of Internet games, many of them turn-based, that require the game player to repeatedly log on and play the game at specified intervals. Many people have become addicted to these types of games and spend hours every day playing these games and wasting time. A 2005 survey of working Americans shows that over 2 hours a day is wasted, and most of that time was using the Internet. That's over $759 billion in wasted time due to technology.

While technological advances have great potential and can be very helpful in advancing people's lives and increasing the standard of living around the world, most technological advances can also be misused and can quickly lead to wasted time – as has happened in America today.

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