A life-saver or another well disguised millstone?
Chindōgu (珍道具?) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that .. seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem .. find that it causes so many new so many new problems .. effectively it has no utility whatsoever
I often find myself wondering how many of the things we allow into our lives could fall into the category of chindōgu.
How many problems in our lives were introduced by the things we hoped would make it so much better.
Especially in the area of technology. The things that do have many useful qualities, yet create many more unforeseen and unexpected problems.
An even better line of thinking may be what useful things become chindōgu because of the way that we use them. Is a smartphone just out of the box useful but, after installing a few dozen distracting and purposefully time wasting apps does it become chindōgu? Was the social network you joined useful when you only followed a couple of dozen friends to keep up with their lives useful but, now that you follow a few hundred people you barely know, is it chindōgu? How about those few blogs you added to a RSS feed reader to stay abreast of a particular subject or save some time navigating to each one? That was useful, I’m sure. Are the few dozen more you added after that?
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But please enjoy the Christmas season, remembering that the giving of gifts is the sharing of good-will and showing thanks for friendship and generosity received. A true and open heart is rarely wrong.