Technology - The Hidden Danger

Many of us won’t remember a time when you could meet friends, have dinner with family or quite frankly go anywhere without at least one piece of technology joining you on the table, ready to alert you instantly to the latest development through an array of appealing notifications.

Society is well and truly addicted to technology. While a version of this has been true for some time, the connected world is now permanently attached to our lives. We wear smart watches and have screens constantly lit up in front of us, often resulting in some form of deviation from the real human connection right in front of us. We choose instead to stare at an alert, a notification or an apparently important message.

We step into our cars and can choose from an unlimited selection of music, send messages and make calls from large and inviting screens. At work, books are replaced with tablets, policies can be accessed from anywhere through intranets, and we can connect with people instantly via Teams. We can send messages to anyone, work from home, and more recently ask AI to present our work in various styles or even do parts of it for us. Some might view these as positive improvements or simply tools to help, and argue that we should embrace this technology, find ways to integrate it and avoid getting left behind.

Of course, many of these advancements can be seen as positive. It is now possible to work from home or quite honestly from anywhere. We can perform micro tasks on the go, connect with people easily and streamline our processes. Writing emails or even this article could have been done entirely by AI (it wasn’t). But is life really better with all this technology? Our phones and watches can summon help if we fall or have an accident. We can find places, recommendations and information instantly. We can learn about things we could only have dreamed of many years ago and we can reconnect with people we might not have seen for years.  So perhaps it is?

But with any positives, there are always negatives. These are often missed by organisations and designers in their quest for evolution and progression. When it comes to connections, it is easier than ever to develop and maintain lots of micro connections, choosing social media friends or WhatsApp groups over meaningful in person relationships. We send Teams messages from one person’s home to another rather than engaging in passing interactions in the office, building friendships and relationships face to face. And when we do finally meet, we are distracted by phones pinging with requests for interaction. The expectation of being online and therefore immediately available plays out. Companies sometimes move traditional ways of working into technological solutions too quickly, prioritising tech over understanding and improving the task itself. We find reasons to use tablets for tasks that are not suitable, rather than looking at the task and adapting it properly. Technology is one option, but it should never be the only option and certainly not used for its own sake.

We now spend time battling log ons, forgotten passwords, endless updates, sign up processes, apps for everything, cyber issues and of course the moment you need an app you must log in. At that point you’ve either forgotten your password or your phone has no data. Books, manuals and documents are often stored on a device, requiring updates that vanish into the depths of an online storage system. You lose the ability to know roughly where things are and search functions vary widely. You know the information is there but cannot find it. You have to charge the device, carry random cables as ports keep changing and after a few years replace the tech with the latest version. Is this really more sustainable?

Traditional tools like books and paperwork simply sit in front of you unless you choose to engage with them. A tablet on the other hand will determine when it wants attention. Red notification dots appear, drawing your attention away from the main task. It may demand an update at the wrong moment and it may not be arranged in a way that prioritises the information you actually need, instead saying ‘it’s here go find it’. Work devices can blur the lines between work and private tasks, presenting messages and emails throughout the day and offering constant routes of distraction. Meetings are spent engaging with people and information not physically present while you miss what is happening right there in front of you. Work can involve organising electronic data, moving files and deleting endless email threads while the actual job role is neglected. Information is presented in unfamiliar ways, constrained by technology, leaving the human to adapt to the new way. We assume what is on a screen is correct. We trust tech and often wrongly assume we are at fault when something looks wrong. Garbage in, garbage out might be true, but it is often difficult to know what went in, where the error is or if there is even an error at all.

Trust is an important point. Things can look appealing, trustworthy and accurate. AI is very good at presenting things convincingly. But I have certainly witnessed hallucinations, incorrect statements and wrong data matching. AI is unlikely to say I’m not sure or ask for help or bring in human experience. It is useful, but I am a long way from believing it is more intelligent than us.

Failing to properly consider the risks technology brings to organisations can have negative consequences. Human Factors looks at the interaction between people, their tasks and their environment. Technology influences all of these both directly and indirectly and should always be considered. Introducing technology for the sake of it, placing things randomly into apps, or throwing data into endless storage systems builds frustration and wastes time. Not considering how and when technology should be used within real world tasks can create multiple routes for distraction and can contribute to safety events. Technology is great for some things and humans are great for others. Using humans to do the work of computers wastes resources and compresses the time available for the meaningful tasks humans are actually needed for.

Managing the issues is challenging. Simply saying don’t be distracted is pointless because distraction is a feature of life. What we can do is limit or restrict opportunities for distraction in the first place. This requires a sensible strategy, risk assessments that consider how tasks are performed in the real world and the development of technology, tasks and processes around the people who use them, not the other way around. Make it easy to do the right thing.

And yes, the irony. I am writing this on a Macbook in Starbucks! I would not be able to be involved in as many things as I am without technology. There are clear positives, but the negative elements require consideration and management, especially for those who have grown up with the internet and now have AI at their fingertips.