I Will Write You an Essay (Out of Love)

"Leisure time is becoming an increasingly rare commodity, largely because technology has failed to achieve its goal of improving our efficiency in our daily pursuits."

This is one of the prompts for writing an essay. I have trouble working up enthusiasm for the topics I've read, and it means I am not settling into thinking about it properly.

Assumptions:
Leisure time is increasingly rare
technology's goal is to improve efficiency

First, define leisure. It now involves technology, these days!

We would not necessarily have more leisure time if we continued to improve technology, because...
1. Leisure time is not rare because of technology -- it is rare because we work too much and play too little.
2. Technology has become more efficient at producing the same type of product in a new skin, such as telephones, television, music, computers, and cameras. They are simply integrated into our existing leisure time by replacing the old technology.
3. Technology helps us to become more efficient, for instance with mobile phones and fast computers, leaving us more time for leisure.

Sorry. This is all I'm thinking at the moment. Besides the astounding fact that with Badger's purchase of a camera today, we now have the same phone, the same computer, and the same camera model.

Comments

[Keith]

Are we to just accept the premise that the goal of technological advancements is to increase efficiency, and that by increasing efficiency our lives are enhanced with more leisure time?

I would argue that the promise of more leisure time is nothing but yet another clever marketing trick - a two-headed coin, with our own technological dependency on one side and the tech company profits on the other.

[e]

increasing efficiency does not result in more leisure time. i find laughable the idea that more leisure time could ever be the aim of technology, which is famously built upon productivity. rather than more leisure time, technology has erradicated leisure altogether time by making all time available for commerce. where once we had necessary islands of "downtime"--the time it took to deliver a letter and compose an answer; the time it took to connect on the phone rather than shout into an answering machine whether the recipient is presently available or not; the instant availability of any and all information without any time to digest it, think about it, reflect or compose thought; all of it was once at least possible "leisure" time (business was done during "business hours") now erradicated by continually proliferating technology. "multi-tasking" and "leisure time" are oxymoronic. that i have no answering machine, that i use my home computer for only my own purposes rather than allowing myself to be constantly available makes me merely eccentric; the demand for demarcated leisure time is reduced to an eccentricity.

aristotle said, of course, that only the man of leisure was capable of actual thought. (well, actually he said "quiboiudyet thisuyley grilete," etc. but you get the drift...)