"We were promised a simpler life, and technology has only complicated our lives"
About this Quote
A designer admitting that the product pitch was a bait-and-switch is doing more than complaining about screen time. Freeman Thomas frames technology as a broken promise, and the word “promised” matters: it points to marketing, not fate. Someone sold us “simpler” as a lifestyle upgrade, then handed us an ecosystem of passwords, updates, notifications, subscriptions, compatibility issues, and the constant low-grade guilt of not optimizing ourselves.
Coming from a designer, the line reads like an indictment from inside the factory. Designers are supposed to sand down friction, make choices invisible, turn complexity into “intuitive.” Thomas is signaling that the industry’s idea of ease has been narrowed to surface-level smoothness: sleek interfaces that conceal sprawling systems underneath. The subtext is that the complexity isn’t an accident; it’s a business model. The more your life runs through devices and platforms, the more you’re nudged into new purchases, new accounts, new dependencies. “Simpler” becomes shorthand for “frictionless consumption,” not “fewer obligations.”
The quote also taps a contemporary anxiety: that convenience has quietly raised the bar for participation. Work follows you home because it can. Social life becomes performance because it’s measurable. Everyday tasks require digital literacy because analog options get deprecated. Thomas’s cynicism lands because it reframes progress as a trade: we gained speed and capability, then paid for it with cognitive load, perpetual maintenance, and the unsettling sense that we’re managing the tools more than the tools are serving us.
Coming from a designer, the line reads like an indictment from inside the factory. Designers are supposed to sand down friction, make choices invisible, turn complexity into “intuitive.” Thomas is signaling that the industry’s idea of ease has been narrowed to surface-level smoothness: sleek interfaces that conceal sprawling systems underneath. The subtext is that the complexity isn’t an accident; it’s a business model. The more your life runs through devices and platforms, the more you’re nudged into new purchases, new accounts, new dependencies. “Simpler” becomes shorthand for “frictionless consumption,” not “fewer obligations.”
The quote also taps a contemporary anxiety: that convenience has quietly raised the bar for participation. Work follows you home because it can. Social life becomes performance because it’s measurable. Everyday tasks require digital literacy because analog options get deprecated. Thomas’s cynicism lands because it reframes progress as a trade: we gained speed and capability, then paid for it with cognitive load, perpetual maintenance, and the unsettling sense that we’re managing the tools more than the tools are serving us.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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