Is technology making humans more impatient?

Question

We humans have always tried to make things faster... Broadband, cars, you name it, but does this mean we are becoming more impatient... You decide

Answer 1

OH YES! Could you imagine sending mail to a friend and waiting over two months for a response? Thats how it was a century ago.

Answer 2

I would blame society as a whole, not just technology. The USA is obsessed with instant gratification. This may be in part with credit cards, who needs to save up when you can just buy now pay later? Personally I get most impatient with the impatience of others (blocking an intersection because they don't want to wait until the next cycle of the traffic light, thus making everyone ELSE wait a cycle too. grrrr I hate it when people do that.

Answer 3

I suppose in some ways, the power to get results instantaneously makes us more impatient. If we want to buy something, we don't wait until we can go to the store, we just do it online. If we want to talk to somebody, we don't wait to see that person or find a telephone, we just use our cell phones.

But in another way, I believe technology requires us to be MORE patient, because oftentimes instead of allowing us to do things faster, technology just fills up more of our time.

As computers increase their speed and capacity, software becomes more bloated and complex and time-consuming. Prior to the Windows operating system, when people turned on a computer, it would boot up in a matter of seconds. Now we wait several minutes for Windows to boot up every time we turn on the computer.

When we make travel plans online instead of going to a travel agent, we're taking time to do something we used to allow others to do for us.

We spend time researching what we want to buy online instead of just going to the store and grabbing something off the shelf. And we spend time buying things that we never would have bothered to get if we had to make the effort of going to the store.

We spend a portion of every day reading and composing email. Prior to the internet, we would write and receive personal correspondence only occasionally.

Prior to cable, we'd turn on the TV and have 3 or 4 channels to flip through. Now we're willing to flip through anwhere from 40 to 100 or more channels!

We buy DVDs with a two hour movie and 10 MORE HOURS of "special features." In the past, who would have ever had the patience to watch twelve hours of ANYTHING?

We used to get annoyed when we were busy and got interrupted by the phone ringing. Now we carry that annoying interrupter around in our pocket.

If technology makes us impatient, why are so many people willing to spend so much time training their big thumbs to navigate a tiny 10-key keypad just to send a silly text message?

If we're in a park or on the bus, we often dread it when someone we don't know sits down next to us and tries to start a conversation. So why are so many of us willing to spend our time on Yahoo Answers, asking and answering questions for TOTAL STRANGERS?

If we are really becoming more impatient, why do we seem to welcome technology that provides us with endless new ways to waste our time?

Answer 4

i think it is, we are getting used to having anything we want instantaneously (sp) and therefore do not like to wait around for anything, i think its also the reason for the increase in road rage. Everyone wants things done at the touch of a button.

Answer 5

Really good question. Yes it is without a doubt, we want what we want and we want it now with no concern for others in our actions. You need some gray hair to really know how much we are missing.