I generally do not like to provide answers in my articles, and rather just instigate thought. However, I feel confident here saying: “No. No, our human biological capabilities have not evolved to the extent of comfortably adapting to today’s technological elements.”
Darwinian Human evolution states that we evolve to better adapt to our environment. This being said, such processes take several millennia and longer. On the other hand, technological advancement has blitzed through time at an unbelievable pace. What are we lacking to align the two?
Speed
My father was in graphic design and branding in the 80s, and was at one of the Middle East’s renowned firms (the equivalent of Leo Burnett today) serving the entire region. He used to tell me how they worked back then: Him and his team would take “high resolution” photographs, imprint letters on top using dry-transfer Letraset by scratching over the letters, and then send them to one of two different studios (depending if it’s B&W or colored), and the color studio would overlay the icons, brand logo, and others, and issue four different film sheets for CMYK printing. All of this took weeks and several people to do.
Jump to today, my Art Director best friend sits all day with 3 screens in front of him, several design and editing applications open, and several layers in each application, aside from the myriad of digital communication tools that he has to stay on top of throughout for sharing, feedback and production.
So less than half a century later, in only a few days the same work is done by one human being. The rate at which our brains are supposed to evolve has probably exceeded Moore’s law itself, which is saying much!
Attention
In the days of “Mad Men“, they had one office door, one desk with some papers on it and one desk phone, and even with that, some had secretaries. The attention split was almost inexistent, “multitasking” probably wasn’t even invented, and work/life balance was a bliss.
Now, the number of “doors” alone that provide access to just me are as many as an entire Mad Men’s floor. The number of inter-human communication channels, information sources, productivity apps… Where do I begin?
Our attention is constantly required, divided and sometimes forcefully stolen, at an almost traumatic rate for some, and prioritization has become grueling.
Memory
We wonder why several times our elderly have excellent memory, recalling information accurately from a distant period of time. Two reasons: They had to (no cloud-synced Contacts and Dropbox, just a Rolodex) and the information quantity was limited.
Nowadays, the amount of daily information heading our way is probably the equivalent of weeks of those of our grandparents. Moreover, there are new categories and types of information that didn’t exist before that are also coming our way.
That sheer influx is enough to drown and confuse our senses and memory. What do I retain? What do I let go off? What do I write down? Where do I store this information in my head? What do I link it to?
When all is said and done, we have very simply physiologically not evolved to handle what we are handling today. The headaches, migraines, burnouts, health issues, and other unfortunate occurrences are very simply all the results of our bodies, mind and souls collectively being fried by the Integrated Circuits. And now, the motherload has arrived: AI. Jobs vs. Health; that is another article altogether.
Stay sane out there, but only where it counts.