[af3d]

Relatively speaking, perhaps, but things really have progressed by several orders of magnitude. When I was young we had access to very little "technology". (Maybe that's why people tended to be somewhat more down-to-earth?) I could change a tire by the age of ten, not to mention being fairly well-versed in a number of subjects. And I was certainly not the exception. Any given person was bound to be proficient at *something*. Younger folks these days however (on average) don't seem to think very deeply about things (probably too many distractions?) and as a result they can be surprisingly ignorant across the spectrum. Not all of them, of course, just an alarmingly high percentage....

[eesmith]

I'm old enough that grocery stores had tube testers in them. Vacuum tubes are technology. So are canned goods, and milled flour, and white sugar, and refrigeration.

My grandfather's shop included a lathe and welding torch. He and my dad swapped out the engine to a car in my Dad's carport. That's technology - the car, the tools to fix it, and parts supply system to make it possible.

My mother had an automatic sewing machine which she used to make clothes. Sewing machines, motorized sewing machines, the looms to make the cloth, the machines to process the cotton - all technology.

We had several hams in the neighborhood, and CB radios were a craze. That's technology.

We got the city newspaper, which was possible from centuries of technological development - the printing press, ink and paper production, typesetting machines, distribution, vending machines.

Most homes had a particle accelerator in them to watch TV. That's certainly technology.

Compare a home now to one made two generations ago, and little has changed - assuming you are lucky enough to avoid the inherent death cycle of products tied to a smartphone. You've got easier access to shows and music, but people in the 1970s still had TV, radio, records, etc.

Compare a home from 1925 to two generations before that, and there you'll see a whole lot more changed.

Electricity is technology. Running water is technology. Municipal sewage is technology. Telephony is technology. Cheap aluminum is technology. Gasoline is technology. Weather forecasting is technology. The vertical filing system is technology. A card catalog is technology. Punched cards is technology.

You had access to a lot of technology when you were young. Why do you dismiss it so?

[relaxing]

Movable type is technology. Archimedes’ screw is technology. The inclined plane is technology. A sharpened stick is technology.

Not all technology is equal. It varies in complexity and the demands it places on our lives.

[eesmith]

Sure. My mention of "printing press" was specifically meant to be moveable type, but that detail doesn't matter.

Now how do you get from your true observation to characterize how technology now is 'several orders of magnitude' greater than the 'very little "technology"' af3d had as kid?

When you talk about "demands it places on our lives", do you mean modern life has higher demands, or lower? And is that a good thing?

Like, in the 1800s, employees worked 12 hour shifts, 6 days/week, with few rest days or holidays. Working conditions were horrible, and a simple slip in attention could cut your fingers off or worse.

That placed a high demand on people's lives - higher than ours now, and higher than those in the Middle Ages. Quoting https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_... :

"Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind."

My mother would make clothes for the family when I was a kid. Sewing is a complex skill which takes effort and time to learn. She stopped when the price of cloth got more expensive than the price of pre-made clothing. Does technology place fewer demands on our lives now?

And how do you factor in the lack of effort we should have been doing to avoid global warming - a problem we've known about since I was a teenager in the 1980s?

[relaxing]

It sounds like you’re really invested in the idea that life was tough in the old days. I’m certainly not going to disabuse you of that notion.

[eesmith]

I said life during 1800s high tech was more demanding on people than now, but I also said that life in the Middle Ages was less demanding on us than now.

Which makes it decidedly difficult to see a simple correlation between technology and ease of life, no matter how many "orders of magnitude" technology has changed.