Opera Internship Blog

When my family got a computer back in 1997, we had a large PC with AOL. I knew how to use Yahoo, and that was about it. Today, I use a MacBook with three browsers installed. I Google everything, am on about four social networks, and I take shortcuts everywhere around the web. Getting places faster is my main goal, so naturally I gravitate toward any innovation that allows me to things faster and easier. I have mouse gestures enabled on my desktop and Opera Web Browser and have customized my keywords so that all I need to do is type “g thai food recipes” when I am Googling recipes for a Thai dinner. And I can put all the sites I love (Facebook being #1) Great innovations allow users to go about their business faster than ever before, and allow them to access all information across the web.

However, there is a real danger to the “faster is better approach. We are starting to see apps and networking sites that claim to aid us in managing every minute detail of our lives. There is suddenly an application for everything. There is Foursquare, for telling people where you are. There are Twitter and Facebook statuses for telling people what you’re up to. Major chain restaurants have iPhone apps that allow you to find the nearest location and order instantly. And of course, there is an app for pretty much any other thing you want to do. These well-meaning apps really do want to help you do things faster, but users can become so inundated with apps and add-ons that navigation becomes clumsy—not faster. “Sorry, I need to use my Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks apps to see which is closer, and then I need to tweet about it so my friends will meet me there. And then I should probably put it on Foursquare and Facebook too. Oh and how do I put it in less than 140 characters?” This is when innovation becomes useless; when life stops for technology instead of letting us get things done. All I want is the ability to get the information I want at the speed I like. And sometimes, I just want to use more than 140 characters.