The rise of technology has certainly made life a lot easier for most of us. I doubt many can imagine even being born 100 years ago. Apart from the World Wars, the World was very different then and so were expectations. The rise of technology has made us seek out new meanings and new directions which our lives should take. But as technology continues to advance, there is the possibility of hitting a crossroads.
When that crossroads hit, it begs to wonder which is better - a difficult life filled with purpose, or an easy one without direction. Obviously, from a perspective of meaning, the former should be the ideal. I mean, our ancestors that were hunter gatherers were quite purposeful in their daily duties to provide and protect themselves and their tribes. So making things easier should not be an excuse to rob our individual lives of meaning that sustains us long term.
There is so much going on in the name of innovation these days. I think with the way products are being churned out in our faces we barely get to question whether we need them. The problem with this is of course the danger of not knowing the things that are meant to feed us with purpose. If we skip the meaningful things then we end up filled with regrets of what we could be doing. There are some things technology shouldn't be allowed to replace in our lives. For most of us, we find meaning in the challenges of the process.
I think in a way, new innovations can help us in having more time to find or pursue our purpose or things that are meaningful to us. Sometimes however, we tend to get entangled in this web of innovations and miss the bigger picture of it all.