Technology that can save you time

[dhilipkumar]

Technology that can save you time :

The vacuum cleaner meant we could give up beating rugs with sticks. Without remote controls, we'd still be trudging across the living room to switch channels on the TV. The Internet made good on Bill Gates' promise to put much of the world's information (and all the world's gossip) at our fingertips.

But has technology really delivered on its promise to save us time and improve our quality of life? The answer is complicated."There's no one-size-fits-all answer," says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist with the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "It depends on how you're using technology. Do you manage your technology, or does it manage you? The Internet is inherently full of circuitous paths to information. It can lead to unexpected discovery or distraction."

Efficiency expert David Allen says you've got to give a little to get a lot. Technology can be your best friend if you spend an hour or a day deciding how to handle the information that floods our lives. For instance, he advocates attacking your e-mail ruthlessly and not letting messages pile up in your in-box.

"If you have the executive discipline to know how to deal with input, technology is a huge boon," says Mr. Allen, founder of Getting Things Done, an Ojai, Calif.-based productivity and efficiency consulting firm. "If you don't, technology will eat your lunch. It will increase the amount of stuff you're not deciding about and stress you out."

Hammers make lousy screwdrivers--and, similarly, Ms. Madden says you have to know enough about techie tools to know what to use and when. Text messaging works best for very brief communications. Using the technology to conduct a complicated discussion could take up more time than if you talked over the phone or in person.

"If you choose the wrong tool, it can turn into a complicated situation," Ms. Madden says.

Whether people feel helped or hindered by technology depends on how comfortable they are with it, she notes. Young people, for instance, view social networks as huge time savers -- older people view them more as time suckers.

"Teens and college students use these tools as a dashboard to manage their social lives," Ms. Madden says. "But put those tools in front of an inexperienced user, and it becomes a burden: 'I have to put all this information on my profile.' "

There's scant evidence that the latest collection of techie tools have saved us as much time as, say, a trusty washing machine. According to a September Pew report that Ms. Madden authored, technology has led to longer work hours.

Of those surveyed who work more than 50 hours a week, 62% said they are expected to log the additional hours because they now have access to the Internet virtually anywhere. Half of all employees who use the Internet at work regularly said they check e-mail on weekends, 46% check e-mail when they're at home sick and 34% check e-mail when they're on vacation.

"Technology giveth, and technology taketh away," says David Whittier, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies technology's impact on society and the environment. "I don't know anyone who seems to have more leisure time. As soon as you're more productive in one way, you become more productive in other ways."

Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Center for New Media, agrees. "If you really look at any technology, from the washing machine to the car, the time [they save] quickly gets filled up with something else," he says. "What we do with that savings is not more contemplation."

Still, even critics acknowledge that we can no longer live without certain technologies. Says Mr. Whittier: "Would I want to turn back time prior to Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )? No way."