The Difference Between Good and Bad Technology

In this day and age, new technologies come up almost every day. A naive assumption is that all technological innovation is good; however, there are cases when a new technology comes into the scene that make you question, “Who exactly is this for?”

A few days ago, I came across a simple but powerful idea that someone on the TikTok brought:

Good technology reflects the user. Bad technology reflects the developer.

Let me give you some examples

When Technology Gets It Right

The 15-Minute COVID Test

Remember the early days of the pandemic? The uncertainty, the constant mental calculus of “Do I have it or not?” Then rapid tests arrived, and suddenly you could know in fifteen minutes if you needed to isolate or you could safely go to that party (I had to do it for a wedding).

That is a good technology. It took the masses anxiety (“Am I sick?”) and removed it entirely, something that anyone could do in the comfort of their home, or in a car lane like a drive-thru, no appointments, no labs, no waiting. Just clarity, fast actions saved lives.

Apple Silicon and the ARM Revolution

In 2020, something else was released: the Apple M1 chip. Then, something interesting happened. The ARM architecture was introduced to consumer computers, allowing laptops to run more efficiently with better battery life.

Apple understood what laptop users actually want. It was not raw power, but the freedom to work from a coffee shop without hunting for an outlet. It’s finishing a long flight with battery to spare. It’s forgetting your charger at home and not panicking.

The M1 reflected the users’ reality: we are mobile, and we are tired of battery anxiety. Apple bet that efficiency mattered more than peak performance. The entire industry followed. Now, AI companies are hunting for energy-efficient processors too, because suddenly everyone realizes that energy efficiency scales, especially for AI datacenters.

When Technology Gets It Wrong

Smart Glasses with AR

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a cool technology, dumb tech but cool. And I have seen this on many iterations over the years, with the last one being the one from Meta. And on every iteration, I hear the same usage example:

“Imagine you are walking in a city, and suddenly you see a building and right there with a (insert gimmick here) you can reveal in front of your eyes the information of that building”

You hear that and say cool, but… what if I just Google it? Suddenly all sales pitches fall apart because the developers never imagined a person that visits a city with a building or monument in mind doesn’t have a phone or just did a research ahead of his visit. It’s like saying you are traveling to China and suddenly the Great Chinese Wall appears, and you did not know it was there. Seriously, who is this built for?

I imagine the developer getting from any part of the world ready to work on a big tech and surprised by the big buildings and what to know more about them and he does not have his phone with him.

AI Assistants and the Privilege Problem

And then there’s the current AI hype of automated “agents” that promise to manage your calendar, answer your emails, make restaurant reservations, and even buy stocks for you.

Where do I start? Considering that for the vast majority of us our schedule is rigid, based on a 9-5 job or similar with extra activities that may or not require a calendar slot, we are not that busy. Most of us have our routine and that is just fine. Answering emails is kinda useful but that only applies to your job, and that requires some thought before replying. A dinner reservation if I do reservations are for special occasions is not that I need to make every meal a reservation, and don’t get me into stock trading because in my country I don’t even have access to platforms like Robinhood. So this sounds more like a top executive that wants to replace their current human assistant with a machine… for what that assistant’s payroll does not come from your own money, and if so what kind of company you are running… Seriously who is this for? Is this for someone privileged enough so it wants a 24/7 life assistant who does not make enough money to pay for a full-time employee?

The Pattern Holds

I could continue with more similar examples; surely you have better ones. But once you see this pattern, you can’t unsee it. Good technology spreads because it solves universal problems, while bad technology is feeble because it only solves developer problems dressed up as user problems.

The best technology doesn’t show off how clever the developer is. It disappears into the user’s life, so seamlessly that they forget it was ever hard.

That’s why every time you start a new project, think of this simple question: Is this just a me problem?