A Better Life Is About Efficiency. Or Is It?

I’ve recently completed reading the series of books about Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro.  Born and raised in the hill country of West Texas, Lyndon Johnson went on to become President of the United States.  But when he was a boy, if his family needed hot water, someone had to take a bucket down to the nearby river, carry the water back to the house, go back out to chop some wood, bring that back to the house, load the wood into the woodstove, light it on fire, then wait for the water to heat. Sounds like a major expenditure of time and effort.

In other words, it used to be a lot of work to take a bath.

What do most people in the United States do today?  Simply turn the spigot and adjust the temperature.  Viola!

By introducing greater efficiency (thanks to engineering and technology and the miracle of modern plumbing) we minimize our personal effort and enjoy the benefits of hot water without even thinking about it.

Most of us reject unnecessary effort. On a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco we do not customarily add a detour to Detroit. We value the use of our time and energy, because both are limited.

Greater efficiency offers the possibility of a greater return on our time and effort. That’s why, for example, the Federal Government has mandated increasing gas mileage for automobiles. They simply want to squeeze the greatest return from the investment in fuel. And perhaps that will have the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gases.

Now, we find ourselves at a particularly interesting juncture in our civilization. With the development of AI, there are opportunities to streamline many of the “executive” and creative tasks typically carried out by humans. Such as writing a blog. But at what cost? What happens when efficiency overrides creativity and the human touch? What happens when we don’t have to “think” anymore to solve problems because a computer will do it for us. Maybe, as with the gathering of water from the river, we’ll be able to use that time to do something more creative and be even more productive. I hope so.

But in the interest of being efficient myself, I think I’ve made the point, and see no value in my saying more about that subject at this time. I assure you, this blog was written entirely by a human.

Alan