Technology making us lazy?

I wasn't quite sure where to stick this so if its in the wrong spot feel free to move it.

This came to thought while I was I watching WALL-E earlier and then watching commercials. It came to thought about how it seems like we do everything online. Or if not we try not to walk anymore than we have to.

We can order just about anything and everything online and if we do we just have it shipped to the house. Or now you can order food (not just drive thru) and just pull up to the curb and they bring it out to you. Or even better...order what we need/want at the big box store and then all we have to do is pull up and they load it into our cars.

Are we THAT lazy that we can't park our car, get out and walk into the store and get what we need ourselves?

Yes I know people get busy and need a little help here and there but the big question is...

Will technology eventually make us so lazy that we won't even have to leave the house for ANYTHING? Not necessarily now but some time in the not so distant future.

I mean, I definitely think technology has assisted in a more sedentary lifestyle to some extent (for instance, I'd much rather reply to this via computer than write a letter and mail it, ya know?) but just as much tech exists to aid in people being more productive than they could have ever been. Six in one, half a dozen in the other, I'd say. It all depends on the person using it.

not really lazy but more like efficient. we have a word about it in our language but I don't know what it is in english hahaha
technology automates the task so it makes people able to focus on other things. I can understand why it can be seen as "lazy"

Laziness is just the way the old people name clever efficiency

because its just clever efficiency :p

We certainly do seem to develop more and more tech that allows us to have machines to do things instead of us (or other people).

Technology is definitely making us lazier. One scary example is what I call the "Google gap." If we need any information or need to query any fact these days, we can access it almost instantly, via the internet/Google. There's no need to consult a book, and, ultimately, there may be no need for our brains to even retain knowledge, because Google can fill in the gaps anyway. Hence, the Google gap.

That's a pretty cynical way of viewing things, and it's not my theory either, I just came up with the name! But there's something to it.

Any technological advance just does what it always has been doing: shifting things from one thing to another.

Nowadays it's easy to look into a topic that you've never had to deal before. It is way faster to find a solution of a problem. Resources are more freely available, as well.

At the same time it's a double edged sword: you need to know what you want and if you can't find what you're looking for, you still end up with the problem. Likewise, if you ever find yourself in a position where your tech isn't there to help you (e.g. no internet), you better remember that one time in the past where you had to deal with something similar.

If there really is a problem with technology (e.g. getting lazy) and it really ends up being a problem, then society will notice at some point (because they have to notice when something clearly doesn't go the way it's supposed to go) and do something about that.


I think most concerns are in regards to understanding concepts of problems. Example: if you're programming for a living then sure, you can get by by looking algorithms up online. But if you don't understand what you're doing and all you do is looking to copy-paste code on the internet, then yes, you are terrible at your job and won't get very far. In that regard, it comes down to people developing some sort of common sense. You can look up stuff, but ultimately you can't find the answers as to how to live your life online.

This is a really interesting topic that I've wondered about from time to time and wanted to discuss a bit. I don't think the Internet is inherently making people lazy.
The time that you spare by just ordering something online instead of having to walk around all the shops in your area searching for it can be used for something more productive for you. I think it also depends where you live. If looking around some shops takes you a whole day of driving around and you're not even sure to find it, you're better just ordering whatever you're looking for online.
There are however some things I've never ordered online like groceries(not implemented in my country, I think? Surely not in my area), and I'm not sure I would, but I can see it being useful for people who have difficulty leaving the house.
The internet for me is for buying stuff you can't easily get in your area.

For the aspect of Google destroying our ability to memorize things... I'm sceptical. It's always up to how you use it. Before Google and the Internet in general, if you were wondering about something, you either had an encyclopedia nearby or (much more common) you never bothered to find out. Now you can find the answer to every random question you have, and that makes it easier to access knowledge that would have been reliant on teachers or courses before.
Want to learn how to cook, or learn a language? If there weren't courses that taught those things in your area, you're stuck.
Search engines make it easier to find the number of that pizza place to order at. Will I google it every time because I can't remember it? Sure, but I probably wouldn't have bothered to remember it anyway, so I google instead of looking it up on my paper contact book every time. It's the same thing.

What I think is much more dangerous about goggle and search engines is how it adapts to your searches, similar to how social networks keep suggesting posts based on what you've already liked. It can end up creating an echo chamber where you only see what already interests you/you agree with. If you're aware of it, you can mitigate a bit because you can actively looking up the things you've "missing", but the problem is all the people that have no idea how the algorithm works, and that when they see something on the internet it's not because it's popular or true, but because it's more likely to get a click/like/view out of them.