What Technology Should Be

I was recently reflecting on how technology would work in an ideal world and it got me thinking about what technology should be at a fundamental level. Those of us who are really into technology look at the specs of certain products and make arbitrary comparisons based on out of context numbers. To me this is not what technology is about, in fact, it’s the opposite. When I think of what technology should be this quote from Halt and Catch Fire comes to mind “Computers aren’t the thing, they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” That’s what technology should be. All these specs and labels are just veils to what technology should be about. We shouldn’t have to worry about our CPU’s processing power when trying to video call a friend across the globe, it should just work. When trying to compute various data sets it’s the data that matters not the name of the computer you’re using. When plugging a cable in you shouldn’t have to think of the shape of the connector, they all should be the same shape and just work. It shouldn’t matter what file format your files are in, or where they are being stored, you should always have access to them without even having to contemplate these complexities. Technology should just fade away and allow us to get to our thing, whatever that may be.