Who doesn’t want to be more efficient? Pay someone else to do your grocery shopping — and clean your house, walk your dog, take that package to the post office. Blend your food so you don’t have to spend time chewing it. Don’t waste time remembering to buy toilet paper; just sign up for an Amazon Prime subscription.
Swipe right. Tap an app. What other on-demand drone-delivered same-day next-hour thingy do you need? Efficiency! Yay!
But perhaps our noble pursuit of efficiency is becoming something more like a frenzied — and self-destructive — obsession. The latest rage in tech is apps that call on-demand dogwalkers, personal assistants, concierges,butlers. Are these really the game-changing innovations that they’re heralded to be? Or are they something more like the rumblings of a new feudal age, in which a small number are masters, and the people formerly known as the middle class servants? And if they are, should we desire such an economy — not for moral reasons but for the sake of prosperity?