When Did Technology Become So Complicated?

There was a time when buying a new device felt like bringing home something that would make life easier. You switched it on, learned a few buttons, and got on with your work.

Today, even a simple task can feel like a small project. There is an account to create, a password to remember, an update to install, a permission to approve and, quite possibly, a subscription to consider.

I work with technology every day. I build websites and applications, and I genuinely enjoy seeing what new tools can do. But that probably makes my frustration more interesting: if I sometimes find modern technology unnecessarily complicated, what must it feel like for someone who simply wants to get a job done?

When simple things stopped being simple

Consider an ordinary printer. You buy it because you want to print a document. Yet setting it up may involve downloading an application, creating an account, accepting several permissions and figuring out why the printer is 'offline' when it is sitting right next to you.

Or take a television. Once, you switched it on and watched something. Now there are multiple apps, logins, updates, recommendations and remote-control buttons that lead to services you may never use.

Even opening a website can become a conversation with the website: accept cookies, reject cookies, subscribe to notifications, sign up for a newsletter, create an account, try the app. Somewhere behind all those requests is the information you came looking for.

I don't think people dislike technology. I think they dislike being made to work so hard to use it.

Every feature has a cost

In software development, adding a feature often sounds like progress. A new dashboard. Another menu. More personalisation. A clever animation. One more integration.

Individually, many of these ideas make sense. Together, they can turn a straightforward application into a maze.

The cost is not only money. It is the time people spend learning new interfaces, finding settings that have moved, remembering credentials and troubleshooting things that worked perfectly well yesterday.

Sometimes the most valuable improvement is not a new feature at all. It is removing three unnecessary steps.

A good application should help me finish my work—not become another piece of work.

Why must everything demand a newer device?

Another thing that troubles me is how quickly useful devices are treated as old.

A computer that once handled email, accounts and office documents comfortably may begin to struggle after years of increasingly heavy software. A phone that still takes calls and photographs suddenly feels slow because the apps have grown larger and more demanding.

Of course, security updates matter. New hardware sometimes enables genuinely useful capabilities. I am not suggesting we freeze technology in the past.

But I would like developers to ask a simple question more often: can we make this work well on the device people already own?

For a family or a small business, replacing working equipment is a real expense. Software efficiency should be treated as a virtue, not an afterthought.

Small businesses need tools, not puzzles

I see this particularly clearly in business software and online advertising.

A shopkeeper may want to display products, receive enquiries and know whether an advertisement brought in customers. Instead, they may find themselves navigating a forest of dashboards, campaigns, pixels, events, permissions and constantly changing settings.

These systems can be powerful. But power without clarity can leave a small business dependent on specialists for tasks that should be understandable.

A useful tool should explain what it is doing in plain language. It should make the next step obvious. And when something goes wrong, it should say what happened and how to fix it—not merely display an error code.

Simplicity takes effort

There is a misconception that simple software is basic software. In reality, making something easy to use can be much harder than adding options.

It takes discipline to decide what belongs on the screen and what can stay out of the way. It takes empathy to imagine a first-time user, an older person, a busy parent or a small-business owner who has no interest in becoming a technical expert.

And it takes confidence to say no to a feature that looks impressive but adds little value.

I would love to see more technology companies compete on a different promise: fewer steps, fewer interruptions, clearer choices and products that last longer.

Perhaps progress should feel lighter

I still get excited about new technology. Artificial intelligence, better networks and more capable devices can solve problems that once seemed impossible.

But the test of progress should not be how complicated a system has become behind the scenes. It should be how simple life becomes for the person using it.

When technology quietly does its job, we barely notice it. Perhaps that is the highest compliment we can give it.

After all, I didn't buy a phone to manage a phone. I bought it to connect with people. I didn't open an application to explore its menus. I opened it because I had something to do.

Isn't it time technology remembered that?