I get it. It’s all going too fast, this technology stuff. One minute we’re trying to set the time on our VCRs, the next we’re at risk of annihilation by AI. You’re not alone if it feels like technology is speeding out of control.

Just trying to learn the basics can be overwhelming. It seems like you barely figure out how to add someone’s name and number to your phone before you have to relearn it all thanks to a software update. Or, even worse, stare blankly as tech support tries to explain how all your contacts got wiped out by the cloud.

It’s tempting to say Hold on! Life was better when technology was simpler! 

And that raises an interesting question. If you could stop technological development at any point in time, what year would you choose? 

In other words, when did human beings hit that sweet spot of not too much technology and not too little?

Well, it depends how far back you go. We could define technology as the first stone-age tools and choose a date somewhere in the pre-industrial world (as historian Ronald Wright put it, “the long stillness before the machine”).

But that’s hardly a useful comparison for us twenty-first century humans. So let’s take a big leap forward.

Say to the 1950s, to the postwar boom in North America. Forget about smart appliances and the dangers of social media. The latest high-tech kitchens boasted things like electric can openers and automatic toasters. The TV (at least for those that could afford it) was a piece of furniture in its own right—one the entire family had to share.

Technological bliss, right? 

Maybe. But if we stopped technology there, we wouldn’t have seatbelts, airbags, pacemakers (1958), CT scanners, or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Should we trade all those lifesaving technologies to avoid the frustration of modern smartphones?

Wait, I hear you say. It’s only the past twenty or thirty years that technology’s gotten out of hand.

Fine. Let’s jump ahead to 1990. We had lots of modern tech but everyone knew how to use it. Nobody was glued to a screen except kids trying to beat their high score in The Legend of Zelda. Your boss couldn’t reach you 24/7 because your phone stayed at home on the wall, right where it belonged. Even those newfangled car phones had to be installed by a specialist, and pagers were usually reserved for actual emergencies. Compared to today, technology was simple.

But get ready to give up the latest technology like treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Forget about all those Zoom calls that kept businesses running (and employees drawing a paycheque) during a global pandemic. And get rid of the latest tech-enabled food safety, with initiatives that make it faster to identify, find, and get contaminated food out of stores and your kitchen.

Because here’s the thing: every technology you don’t want exists with technology you do want.

Will AI destroy humanity or save us? I have no idea. Do social media apps manipulate us to spend more time on our screens? Of course they do.

Good or bad, every new piece of tech comes with unintended consequences. It’s been that way since the first human hands figured out how to make a spear, and it’s not going away any time soon.

Maybe the better question, then, is how do we get better at using it?