Is There an App for That?
Ah convenience, we all love it don't we? Who doesn't like to "one stop shop" or "just sit back and watch" but lately I am becoming a bit concerned with Americas love for convenience. I mean I get the convenience store where you can buy milk, lottery tickets, candy bars and a Playboy all in one stop, but I don't get the ever increasing desire to have to do absolutely NOTHING.
You could literally find "convenience" items for everything these days (wow, someone is sounding old). Walk into the grocery store (notice the automatic doors that open to welcome you) and you enter a sea of pre-washed, pre-cut, pre-packaged foods all making it "easier" to cook. Those that want to do even less are provided with aisles of already pre-cooked convenience meals, and those that want to do even less work, hey there is always a McDonalds on the way home.
And once home you need not worry about lifting a finger. You can buy automatic shower cleaners, automatic toilet cleaners, automatic vacuums and mops. You can even buy an apparatus that will stir a pot for you. Yes, stir a pot, because god forbid you burn a calorie stirring the pasta sauce. Plus you may be standing in the way of the automatic floor mop! Something tells me the people purchasing automatic sauce stirring machines are not the same as those who actually MAKE homemade soups and sauces, but I digress.
So now that you are settled in your automatically cleaned house you wave your hands under the automatic soap dispenser and then under the automatic water faucet and wash up for dinner. With your pre-made dinner fresh out of the microwave you sit on your sofa and click through channels with the remote. After dinner you pop the dishes in the dishwasher to be cleaned for you and sit back down to check your email on your phone. A few moments later you decide you want to listen to some music so you click the app to start up your ipod player and relax with the online version of the newspaper all without leaving the comfort of the sofa.
Later you have a craving for ice cream so you open the freezer and grab a carton of Ben and Jerry's along with a spoon and settle back on the sofa. While perusing Facebook on your phone you realize that people are already posting pictures of pool parties and lake trips and it reminds you that you aren't exactly swimsuit ready. No problem! A quick Google search and a few clicks later you are the proud owner of extreme weight loss pills that ensure you will loose up to 10 pounds in a single week without changing your lifestyle. Just sit back and watch the fat melt away. Perfect.
Satisfied with your purchase, you polish off the carton of ice cream, I mean why not, it's all going to melt away when the pills arrive, and head for bed. You brush your teeth with an automatic toothbrush, have a pee that is flushed away with automatic toilet cleaner and as you walk to bed you are spritzed by an automatic air freshener. Ah, refreshing.
Of course I am being somewhat sarcastic, but honestly I think it is getting out of hand. I don't so much have a problem with the products being provided as I do with the effect they are having on us as a society. People are actually forgetting how to perform simple tasks and/or beginning to think they are incapable of doing things for themselves.
We are loosing sight of the fact that life isn't supposed to be easy, not everything SHOULD just be done for you. I think we are forgetting what it feels like to accomplish a task, even one as mundane as scrubbing the toilet.
OK, let me step down from the soap box and clarify. I like convenience just as much as the next guy. I don't want to scrub my laundry on a rock or strain fresh pumpkin to make a pie. I check email and Facebook on my iphone in bed, wish there was a pill that would melt the cartons of ice cream away and I sure as hell don't want to stand up to change the TV channel, but at the end of the day, doing things for myself like chopping vegetables and pumping my own damn hand soap make me feel human. And sometimes it is important to remember that we are just that, humans.
You could literally find "convenience" items for everything these days (wow, someone is sounding old). Walk into the grocery store (notice the automatic doors that open to welcome you) and you enter a sea of pre-washed, pre-cut, pre-packaged foods all making it "easier" to cook. Those that want to do even less are provided with aisles of already pre-cooked convenience meals, and those that want to do even less work, hey there is always a McDonalds on the way home.
And once home you need not worry about lifting a finger. You can buy automatic shower cleaners, automatic toilet cleaners, automatic vacuums and mops. You can even buy an apparatus that will stir a pot for you. Yes, stir a pot, because god forbid you burn a calorie stirring the pasta sauce. Plus you may be standing in the way of the automatic floor mop! Something tells me the people purchasing automatic sauce stirring machines are not the same as those who actually MAKE homemade soups and sauces, but I digress.
So now that you are settled in your automatically cleaned house you wave your hands under the automatic soap dispenser and then under the automatic water faucet and wash up for dinner. With your pre-made dinner fresh out of the microwave you sit on your sofa and click through channels with the remote. After dinner you pop the dishes in the dishwasher to be cleaned for you and sit back down to check your email on your phone. A few moments later you decide you want to listen to some music so you click the app to start up your ipod player and relax with the online version of the newspaper all without leaving the comfort of the sofa.
Later you have a craving for ice cream so you open the freezer and grab a carton of Ben and Jerry's along with a spoon and settle back on the sofa. While perusing Facebook on your phone you realize that people are already posting pictures of pool parties and lake trips and it reminds you that you aren't exactly swimsuit ready. No problem! A quick Google search and a few clicks later you are the proud owner of extreme weight loss pills that ensure you will loose up to 10 pounds in a single week without changing your lifestyle. Just sit back and watch the fat melt away. Perfect.
Satisfied with your purchase, you polish off the carton of ice cream, I mean why not, it's all going to melt away when the pills arrive, and head for bed. You brush your teeth with an automatic toothbrush, have a pee that is flushed away with automatic toilet cleaner and as you walk to bed you are spritzed by an automatic air freshener. Ah, refreshing.
Of course I am being somewhat sarcastic, but honestly I think it is getting out of hand. I don't so much have a problem with the products being provided as I do with the effect they are having on us as a society. People are actually forgetting how to perform simple tasks and/or beginning to think they are incapable of doing things for themselves.
We are loosing sight of the fact that life isn't supposed to be easy, not everything SHOULD just be done for you. I think we are forgetting what it feels like to accomplish a task, even one as mundane as scrubbing the toilet.
OK, let me step down from the soap box and clarify. I like convenience just as much as the next guy. I don't want to scrub my laundry on a rock or strain fresh pumpkin to make a pie. I check email and Facebook on my iphone in bed, wish there was a pill that would melt the cartons of ice cream away and I sure as hell don't want to stand up to change the TV channel, but at the end of the day, doing things for myself like chopping vegetables and pumping my own damn hand soap make me feel human. And sometimes it is important to remember that we are just that, humans.
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