Living life to the max!

ARE YOU TIRED OF MISSING OUT ON ALL THAT LIFE HAS TO OFFER? DO YOU WANT TO LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST, SQUEEZING THE LAST DROP OF POTENTIAL OUT OF THE FRUIT OF AWESOMENESS? ARE YOU TIRED OF FEELING LIKE JUST ANOTHER PERSON IN THE RAT RACE OF LIFE? IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THESE QUESTION THEN I HAVE GREAT NEWS FOR YOU.
There's an app for that.

I find I am rapidly becoming anti-technology. All of these things that claim to make our life better and make us more efficient do little more than create complexity in our lives with the added benefit of a monthly bill and regular upgrade costs. I understand that technology is cool, but it's also expensive, sometimes difficult to use, fragile, expensive, and rapidly obsolete.

So much of the drive to adopt new technology seems to come from a desire to get the maximum out of everything. You need a 3D HD-LED TV and Blu-Ray player matched up to your Banf & Olufsen sound system so that when you stream Netflix episodes of Weekend Warriors through your X-box Kinect you will be able to see and hear every last detail so that you too, can install pergraniteel in your home for only minimal cost.

I have a cell phone that I barely use, and yet everyone around seems to have a smart phone, with a total cost of ownership of over a hundred dollars a month. I still can't figure out what the point of a tablet PC is beyond having a bigger screen on a smart phone that now doesn't make phone calls. As far as I can tell you either get a less functional computer, or a really big smart phone that doesn't make phone calls, depending on how you want to look at it. And it costs more than each of them. I have a friend who works for a software company. His boss wants them to make an i-pad app for one of their client companies. They already provide the software to the company in PC format, and the client company doesn't use i-pads in their business, and has no interest in an i-pad app that does the same thing as what they already do but requires purchasing additional equipment. But, the boss loves his i-pad and can't figure out why the client wouldn't want to also use i-pads in addition to PCs. Smart client, dumb boss.

I could go on for hours about all of the devices that digital technology is worming its way into with little to no real benefit. As I was driving home today listening to All Things Considered, and they really do mean it, I heard a segment that left me baffled. You can listen to it on npr, and if you do could you please tell me why would someone want to know the difference in body fat composition between their left and right arm, and why would they want to upload that information to Twitter? Gary Wolf has some ideas but I am unconvinced.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we started paying attention to what matters vs. trying to maximize what doesn't? For some hints about what you may want to be focusing your life on, check out a countdown of 1000 of them.