Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There’s a peculiar contradiction in the way we talk about technology. We complain about what technology has done to our world, how complicated everything has become, how disconnected we feel, and how much better life supposedly was “back then.” We romanticize simpler times as though humanity once lived in some idyllic little paradise before smartphones and Wi-Fi ruined everything.

But let’s be honest: nobody actually wants to go back that far.

Nobody is volunteering to move into a cave. Nobody is standing in line to trade their air conditioning for a wool blanket and a fire. Nobody is suggesting we all climb aboard a wagon train, cross the prairie for six months, build a house with our own bare hands and then hope the roof doesn’t collapse during the first thunderstorm.

We like technology.

We like the internet. We like instant communication. We like refrigerators that keep food from rotting, washing machines that save us from beating clothes against a rock, GPS that tells us where the hell we are, and medicine that has turned diseases that once killed millions into things we can treat. And if you’ve got one, nobody is volunteering to give up that beautiful 75-inch flat-screen television hanging on the wall.

That’s the funny part.

We don’t actually want “simpler times.” We want modern conveniences without modern complications.

Hollywood understands this contradiction particularly well. So many dystopian movies are built around a future where the technology we take for granted has disappeared. No electricity. No internet. No running water. No grocery stores stocked with everything from strawberries in January to frozen pizza at 2 a.m. No air conditioning. No Amazon. No streaming. No microwave. No 75-inch television.

And somehow we’re supposed to look at that future and think, Ah, finally. Simplicity.

No.

That’s not simplicity.

That’s hell with a rustic aesthetic.

There’s nothing inherently noble about making everything harder. There is no virtue in dying from an infection because antibiotics haven’t been invented yet. There is no spiritual enlightenment in spending three hours chopping wood before you can cook dinner. There is no magical return to community when everyone is exhausted from simply trying to survive.

The problem isn’t that technology exists.

The problem is what we’ve chosen to do with it.

Technology can make life easier, more connected and more productive. It can also make us distracted, isolated, manipulated and perpetually connected to a machine that never shuts up. That’s the part worth questioning.

Maybe what we’re really longing for isn’t a simpler world.

Maybe we’re longing for a simpler relationship with the world.

We want the benefits of civilization without feeling like civilization is consuming us. We want the internet without being buried beneath it. We want technology without being controlled by it. We want convenience without surrendering our attention, our privacy or our humanity.

Because if the choice is between today’s complicated world and the “good old days” of wagon trains, outhouses and dying from an infected splinter, I’ll take the Wi-Fi.

I’ll even take the 75-inch television.

But maybe every once in a while, we should turn the damn thing off.

That’s probably the simplest time we’re actually looking for.