Issue 104: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION / Technology

Bring Back the On/Off Knob.

💬 Sir John Hegarty

I’m thinking of writing another book. If I do, I’d title it Bring Back the On/Off Knob.

The point of technology is to make something more effective and simpler to use. That’s the deal. Yet we now find ourselves enmeshed in digital technology that’s making life harder. Try turning on my TV. What should be a straightforward action quickly becomes an exercise in complexity. Passwords. Access to payment. Constant upgrades. Menus that lead to more menus.

This isn’t limited to television. The same thing happens when we try to pay for something, access a service, or park a car. How many parking apps do we actually need? Each one claims to simplify the task, yet each introduces another layer of effort. Another login. Another password. Another demand for your attention.

Markets open up when they make something of value easy to access. Frictionless access is what allows adoption to scale. There’s a story from the 1930s that illustrates this perfectly. General Motors developed the automatic transmission because people were reluctant to negotiate the stick shift, as they call it in the US. Driving required too much effort. The introduction of the automatic transmission changed that. Car ownership accelerated because complexity was removed.

That’s how progress works.

Sadly, many digital enterprises today aren’t really offering us a service at all. They are far more interested in our data. Data that can be collected, traded and sold on to other commercial enterprises. Once that becomes the priority, the user experience stops mattering. Simplicity becomes secondary.

The result is technology that fails to be of real value. It doesn’t reduce effort. It increases it. It doesn’t serve people. It extracts from them.

There’s a great saying in business. Complexity destroys profitability. It also destroys trust. It erodes goodwill and patience in equal measure.

Complexity destroys profitability.

Which is why the idea persists.

Bring back the On/Off Knob.

Bring back the On/Off Knob.

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