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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 Most of my life will be a waste EVERY Sunday morning I wade through my newspaper for something to read. If I chance on an article of likely interest it is quickly scanned and I either decide to read or move on. Should I decide to read, the article is ripped out and put on a select stack. After about an hour my scanning and reading are complete and the whole is dispatched to the bin. Of late I have been unable to find little, if anything, worth reading. What a waste of time: one hour each Sunday spent looking for something to read is just over two days a year. Supposing I have another 25 years to live, I will have wasted more than 50 days scanning Sunday newspapers. But even worse, my non-weekend efforts see a further 20 minutes or so each day expended in the same search-and-read routine. This wastes a further two hours a week and adds another four days a year, bringing my 25-year expectancy total to 100 days. This sobering realisation prompted me to look at magazines and technical journals. At a modest estimate, these account for about as much again, at about six days a year. So about a year of my assumed remaining 25 years could be wasted just looking for things to read. Of this total I suspect that less than 10 per cent will be worthwhile in the long run. Considering all this, I decided to study the time wasted in my life over a four-month period. Here are my average figures to date in hours per week: waiting in line, 1.72; dealing with junk paper mail, 0.23; sitting in traffic jams, 2.34; waiting for food, 3.16; unwanted email, 0.22; waiting for people who are late, 0.15; waiting for rail, bus and air transport, 2.61. This lot totals 10.43 hours a week. Near on half a day a week is lost, and those responsible are stealing my life. This is around 25 days a year and 625 days out of my assumed 25 remaining years - a loss of more than 1.7 years. Given the crudity of my measurements, and the limited measures I have chosen, I stand to lose at least three of my 25 years in wasted time. I suspect I could find a further one-year loss if I counted the time trying to contact people, fix software and systems and more. But even a four-year loss is overshadowed by the time wasted on sleeping, bodily ablutions and more, which in my case currently amounts to some 10 years. So, about 56 per cent of my future will go up in smoke through the inefficiencies of human biology and society. For the moment, we can do little about our biological needs, but we can reduce the other losses. The hardware, software, networks and logistic systems necessary to improve our effectiveness are available. They only require developing and deploying to eradicate waiting in line, traffic delays, and the archaic scanning of paper for news. Video-conferencing, telepresence, electronic working and commerce will all help. The opportunity is huge. Those at the forefront of technology are achieving 10 times more a year than a decade ago. So, recovering four years in the next 25 would be equivalent to more than a human working lifetime 10 years ago. But technology realises a compound interest mechanism that magnifies our abilities year on year. The potential is therefore far greater, but somehow I still feel cheated. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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