I strongly believe in the promise of technology, when directed toward the right ends, to lead to a genuinely better world for all. But I would estimate that ninety-nine percent of technologies created today only create new addictions. They “improve” our lives only in the sense that they become our new baseline of expectation, ultimately creating new barriers to contentment.
There are technologies, like medicine, which truly improve life for people. But most of the technologies which can actually serve this end effectively are psychotechnologies. We need tools and methods for cultivating robust well-being and self-mastery. We need to find and provide the keys to the kind of flourishing which is less dependent on external things, not more dependent on them.
If we want to truly improve the world, we need to train people to build systematically better minds – our emphasis on “making people happy” needs to shift to “making happy people.”
— Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Ryan A. Bush