NdukuOutLoud

Convenience or captivity? On the endless cycle of invention and reinvention.

Technology has made work easier-no question. Easier to do, and easier to lie. Before online meetings, people had to sit around a table and face each other. You couldn’t hide your expression when Susan said something silly, or when Dave fell short. You had to be present.

Now, meetings happen while you multitask in the background. Convenience is good, but it’s also bad. Work can be done from anywhere, which means even on vacation you’re never truly away. Emergencies can be solved across the world, tethering us to our devices in ways that feel both liberating and suffocating.

Yuval Noah Harari once suggested that wheat might not have been humanity’s first domesticated plant, but rather the first plant to domesticate us. Humans settled down to care for wheat, instead of roaming free. Technology feels the same. We built machines, trained them, taught them-and now they teach us, show us things we never imagined, and bring our dreams to life. Sometimes I wonder: are we using technology, or is it using us?

Every new invention throws us into a cycle of learning, relearning, and reinventing. There’s no endgame—just endless adaptation. Phones we can’t leave home without, cars that drive themselves, toddlers pacified by screens while dinner cooks. It’s hard not to feel like the machines are already in charge.

And yet, amid all this change, some tools remain timeless. They remind us of slower, more human rhythms. Take the pen for example. AI can build websites from scratch, but pens have barely changed. Sure, ink colours vary, glitter can be added, but the concept is the same. The pen is one of the most reliable technologies ever created for the workplace.

Pens don’t threaten to take your job. They don’t plot to overthrow you. They simply wait-quietly-for you to pick them up and sign a document, jot a note, or sketch an idea. They reached their climax long ago, and stayed there.

Unlike the endless churn of updates and reinventions, they simply endure. Maybe that’s the paradox: while technology accelerates, we still crave anchors that remind us to linger, to be present, to stay human.