Technology or Technique?

By Kit Sullivan

There is no doubt that we are living in an era where technology has made just about every day-to-day chore easier to handle, quicker to complete and in many circumstances completely unnecessary.

The myriad modern conveniences that surround us in our daily lives has made us all but forget about the little extra things we used to take for granted but nonetheless had to do every day — things like writing down someone’s phone number so we could call them back, when today we just use our cell phone’s caller-ID system to recall that number whenever we need it.

Or maybe you remember a time when you had to go outside early to get the morning paper to find out about the latest events instead of just checking your lap-top for up-to-date world info at the click of a mouse. Possibly you even once owned a car where you had to actually put the key into the door lock to unlock it every day instead of just electronically unlocking it with your key-fob remote.

These are but a few examples of the thousands advances, improvements and developments that have help to enrich our lives over the years. And the one true thing about technology is that it never stops improving. Revolutionary ideas beget new ways of thinking, which in turn spurs on the development of even newer and more advanced technology.

The promise of technology is that it will allow us to complete small, mundane tasks as well as larger, more involved projects faster and with less effort and time than if completed the “old” way. When all of these small and not-so-small improvements are added up, we should all end up with a life that has been enriched with higher levels of personal satisfaction, job performance and internal sense of well-being. The truth, as we all know all too well, is quite different.

Eastern philosophy is based in large part on the concept of yin and yang. Yin and yang are simply the opposites of whatever subject, idea or item you may be contemplating. For every up there is a down, for every left there is a right, for all darkness there is corresponding light, for every yes there is a no, and in modern scientific terms for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

You may have even heard this concept phrased in the old adage, “there is no free lunch,” which simply means that there is a cost or an expenditure required for every action. Nothing is truly ever free — not in physics, not in philosophy and not at the lunch counter.

Technology, by the very laws of nature, must follow this concept. Modern technology as a concept is best understood when looked at in the following four stages.

The Promise:
New and revolutionary technology nearly always promises to improve our lives by dramatically increasing our productivity without increasing our expenditures to the same degree.

The Function:
New technologies are typically introduced in such a way as to demonstrate that with the same individual effort that was applied before the new technology existed, we can all achieve greater levels of accomplishment without a corresponding higher level of effort.

The Reality:
Human nature, being what it is, intrudes on this theory and instead of continuing with the same efforts as before and enjoying greater achievements, we learn to take advantage of the new technology to help us achieve the same levels of success as before with less effort than before on our part.

The Outcome:
Our day-to-day lives remain much the same as before, only it takes increasing levels of newer technology to maintain the status quo due to our interdependence on technology to complete what we ourselves would do for ourselves only a short time before.

In the quick lube business, this entire scenario has played out time and time again over the years. When I first started in the quick lube industry (not quite 20 years ago) things were much the same as today, yet at the same time dramatically different.

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