“When things are too easy, we may become like unchallenged schoolchildren, sullen and perpetually…

“When things are too easy, we may become like unchallenged schoolchildren, sullen and perpetually dissatisfied”

At the New Yorker, Tim Wu cautions us against overvaluing convenience technologies, or the tools that “require little concentrated effort and yield predictable results”:

Convenience technologies supposedly free us to focus on what matters, but sometimes the part that matters is what gets eliminated. Everyone knows that it is easier to drive to the top of a mountain than to hike; the views may be the same, but the feeling never is. By the same logic, we may evolve into creatures that can do more but find that what we do has somehow been robbed of the satisfaction we hoped it might contain.

“We must take seriously our biological need to be challenged, or face the danger of evolving into creatures whose lives are more productive but also less satisfying,” he writes. Related: this Rosa Brooks piece at the Washington Post urging women to “recline, not lean in.” Happy to do that, or even just lie down, maybe sleep for awhile as part of my subscription to “Take Your Pants Off, You Deserve It” chillwave feminism, congratulations, we’ve all already made it.