[dalbasal]

True. Arguably, work and social life have also gotten more difficult, at least for some.

Meanwhile.. it's also not overwhelmingly true that administration, and other things heavily affected by computerisation are "better," more efficient or productive.

That's easy to see in non-commercial space. It's also true in commercial space. Government. Universities. Education.

This is all tightly coupled with op's point. Digitization, computerization, networking... These really were major revolutions. They impacted and totally reformed everything. However, this has been more of a change than an improvement in many applications. Slightly better in some ways, slightly worse and others, ambiguous, mixed... complex.

The computerization of social life, entertainment.. childhood experiences. Etc. There are long causality chains.. and we don't really understand the consequences of everything.

But in any case.. I think you're absolutely right on TCs and administrative life.

Technology made it easy to have more, more complex paperwork. That allows us to produce a lot more paperwork. A handwritten contract with two lawyers present.. is a marginal cost. Even a sign here, take-it-or-leave-it contract (EG financing, or opening an account) representing some marginal cost.

Computerization makes this whole thing more efficient. Automated emails, tick-to-agree pop-ups... Those allow humanity to create many more contracts than previously possible.

That's efficiency, of a sort. If you consider contracts themselves to be an output... The efficiency gains a greater than Henry Ford's entire lifetime.

I think we've learned something. Technological change, and it's proliferation does not necessarily aggregate in an idealic way.

I think the fear of paperclip maximizing AIs.. I think this is more of an analogy to our experience with recent tech shifts.. beyond its veracity as a danger vector for AI specifically.

[oblio]

I don't remember where I read, but someone said:

Technology has made our lives faster, but not better.