"It's in this way that progress covers its track, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are is where we were meant to be" - by Nicholas Carr (The Big Switch)

The generation that witnesses the arrival of a new technology or world order retains a lived memory of both the old and new methods. They are aware of what was traded away or lost in exchange for convenience and efficiency. As they slowly die out the knowledge of what was traded is forgotten.

While it is different between groups of people, depending on technological adaptation many of us are trading:

• True unreachability and that being unconnected was the default state.
• The serendipity of getting lost in favor of safety.
• A combination of the last two is also more modern parents opting to put GPS trackers on their children to alleviate their worry of not knowing where they are. The cost is that their kids grow up knowing they are always being watched and the parents not learning to put their trust into them. The choice of course largely depends on how much the parents trust the environment.
• Boredom (a moment of daydreaming, self reflection, and observation of strangers) in favor of interacting with the smartphone for fast information access.
• Ownership in favor of renting access. For example Netflix or Streaming having become popular over owning DVDs.
• Tourism for the sake of taking pictures leaves us with not truly experiencing the place. Note that I am not necessarily judging all of them. I understand where they are coming from
• Sustained attention (e.g. reading books), which is less common now than scrolling short form content.
• Self reliance (international logistics)
• Understanding (increased use of LLMs or other tools reduce the need for thought and understanding of the created systems)

Now let's think about things we could expect in the future (sci fi extreme examples)

• Sleep and rest is the time period in which we cannot do any work. It is one of the last protected time slots of our days that has remained largely untouched for centuries and not been used to extract more work or commercial value out of. Some people who strive to maximize their free or productive time are trying to reduce the amount of sleep they need (e.g. different sleep schedules). Now imagine what could happen if people didn't have to to sleep anymore. For example an energy drink that has the same effects as 8h sleep without physical side effects. A possible resulting scenario would be that there will be some people underbidding their labor, but being able to do more of it. This would make salaries more competitive for others in the same industry, which leads to more people working longer to compensate for their reduced hours and then in order to earn enough for their living end up being forced to drink the energy drink. Whatever sleep may bring other than rest (dreaming, processing information), will be lost. After a generation or two this will be normalized and the future generations will think that this is how it was always meant to be, not knowing what has been lost in the process. That we traded the last bit of our time to fill the pockets of some boss, investor or whoever is at the top of the pyramid.
• Currently everyone will eventually die. With it social change is possible. New generations have a chance to displace some old held beliefs. In science it happened with Quantum mechanics, in politics it may end dictatorships, in social hierarchy it gives upward mobility and in personal life it gives meaning or urgency. If death were to be cured and our society is not adapted the world could stagnate and would remove one of the most fundamental values which is survival and preciousness of life.
• Taking things a step further there are the Transhumanists who want to replace their own human body with a "superior" (usually robotic version of itself) in order to avoid death or in other ways improve their capabilities. However with these technologies, biological components of live such as pleasure, satisfaction from overcoming challenges to the human physique (sports) or mastery of haptic abilities, might get lost or replaced with other pursuits.

Note the similarity between them all. All of these get replaced in favor of speed, efficiency, convenience or profitability. It seems like these qualities are dominating others. What was lost, such as sustained attention, craft or self-reliance, doesn't even register as a loss, because it is no longer valued in the same way. Maybe it's less like forgetting and more like loosing the eyes to see what's missing. In public discourse this is then often portrayed as inevitable (technological determinism) or even "where we were meant to be". However isn't the reason us believing it being inevitable that we ourselves collectively prioritise those values? We are aware of what we are loosing or already lost, but will the future generations?

Consider a child growing up with a smartphone having made all their friends online (never having met in person). Will they ever know the difference of what it is like to meet in person compared to online? For most this is a dystopian scenario, but is a dystopia perceived as such by those living in it?

It seems to me like these inventions create environments that are changing our own values. For that I am going to spoiler a bit about the 2020 series "Brave New World" based on the Book of the same name. In that book there are two societies. One is called New London, which is technologically advanced and stable. Unlike our current world however the society of New London is in its entirety polygamous and is even actively forbidding monogamy. There is no privacy, there are no mothers (children are born via artificial means) and every bit of sadness or mental stressor can be supressed with a drug "SOMA" that changes the mood. The other society is called the "Savage Lands" and it's basically normal people as we know them today put into a large cave like a zoo to show "how primitive" society was in the past. The point being the values of these two societies are completely different. The New Londoners would frequent the savage lands as a form of vacation or entertainment. There were two women from New London that had a different take on the values of the savage lands. One of them got pregnant in the savage lands, was left behind and hoped to eventually return back to New London. She remained addicted to drugs (alcohol as the substitute to SOMA). Another woman who had a traumatizing experience in the savage lands did manage to return, but she never fully reintegrated into new London and even rejected their values outright, because she noticed that what she believed in, she did because of societal conditioning. An analogy is like waking up from a dream and then falling back asleep, but knowing that one is dreaming. It is no longer the same.

These women were differently affected by the exposure to the savage lands. Why is that? Most likely the personality and values of the person decides the compatibility with the values in a different society. I believe that this may also be the case in reality. Some of us, especially from the west coming to third world countries without such technological exposure want to return as we don't feel comfortable, while others thrive in it.

In conclusion our inventions change the environment, which in turn is constructive to some and destructive to other values. We have to be careful of what societal impact our inventions have. As described by Scorates: "The ones inventing are usually not the ones aware of the consequences their inventions have." and those consequences can be as fundamental as changing even the values people live by. A stressed environment makes a society prioritize values benefitting survival. This can differ between societies: For example India values social connection more, because it is necessary for survival, while in the west social connection is less necessary due to technology replacing it (e.g. using google maps instead of asking for directions). Meanwhile a society which experiences less survival pressure may take up more hedonistic or curiosity driven values.