Technology is a trickster. Just when you think you’ve solved one irritation, it slips another under the door. The mobile phone freed us from the office desk, but in return, it chained us to chargers, updates, and screen-time doom-scrolling. Today’s traveller carries more cables than cufflinks. Every pocket buzzes, every device chirps, and half the time, the only thing being synchronised is your stress levels.
Passwords were meant to make us safe, now they are a test of memory so cruel that I am sure Dante would list them in one of the lower circles of hell. Notifications promised connection, they became the modern equivalent of a toddler tugging at your sleeve. Cloud storage was meant to be the pit where your old files went to die, so to speak, but instead, we rent it forever, like a storage unit for forgotten CDs we no longer listen to. Progress always delivers, but never without strings attached, and those strings are often tangled.
Let’s play a game to understand this. Consider “Glintt”, the fictional darling of tomorrow’s tech press. A sleek pair of AI-powered glasses that whisper insights into your ear and project data elegantly across your field of view. A sales director strides into a meeting wearing them and, with a flicker of the lens, sees the client’s share price, board members, even the CEO’s latest tweet. A competitive edge so sharp it cuts the air. Until, of course, the software update arrives. Suddenly, those lenses are littered with pop-up nudges, geo-tagged adverts, and relentless reminders that your inbox is fatter than your expense claims. The boardroom becomes Times Square. Productivity turns into paralysis. And out of nowhere, a whole new industry springs up, companies selling filters to save you from your own futuristic eyewear. One firm’s revolution becomes another firm’s business model.
It won’t stop there. Wireless charging will soon seep into every airport lounge, hotel lobby and corporate office. A dream? Not quite. Because nothing stays free for long, before you know it, energy itself will be carved into packages and priced like data plans. “Power roaming” will appear on your next travel itinerary, offering 200 volts abroad with a surcharge for fast-charging zones. Expect loyalty programmes too, Platinum customers will sip their lattes while their phones charge at 3x speed, while everyone else trickle-feeds beside the bin. Liberation always finds a way to send you a bill.
Artificial intelligence is already sitting at the meeting table, taking notes, drafting slides, and chipping in with bullet points. But when three rival AIs attend the same meeting, one from your side, one from your client, one from the consultants, the transcript reads like a committee of over-caffeinated interns. Each produces a version of events, and the human participants spend more time reconciling contradictions than discussing strategy. Congratulations, you’ve invented version chaos, a time-sink dressed up as efficiency.
And then there’s privacy, the oldest casualty of all. The direction of travel is clear, it will soon be sold back to us like spirits in a minibar. Digital invisibility will become the preserve of those who can afford the subscription, while the rest of us live in the economy cabin of surveillance. If bottled water can become a multi-billion-pound industry, why not bottled privacy? Seriously, think about it!
The real trick, the part businesses and investors should pay attention to, is that every irritation becomes a market. Password fatigue minted billion-dollar authentication companies. Notification overload has kept mindfulness apps in business. Apple turned device clutter into ecosystem loyalty, persuading users that the only way out of complexity was to go deeper in. If the rule holds, visual spam, power roaming and AI version chaos are not warnings, they’re opportunities in disguise. The future’s most profitable firms may not be the ones inventing the problems, but the ones selling aspirin for the headaches.
Yet there’s a human bill to be paid. Employees already murmur of “digital fatigue”, their focus chipped away by updates, alerts and endless switching. Managers talk about empowerment while their teams drown in dashboards. The executive armed with Glintt glasses ends the day not enlightened but frazzled, eyes twitching from the data overload. Progress keeps its receipts, and those receipts often land on the wellbeing of the workforce.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies that design for subtraction rather than addition, fewer logins, fewer updates, fewer gizmos, may emerge as the true innovators. As the old saying goes, less is more. Anticipating the second-order headache, rather than simply racing to market with the first-order thrill, could separate sustainable winners from fashionable flashes in the pan. It’s a radical thought in a culture that worships at the altar of “more”, but it may be the most valuable.
The pattern is too consistent to ignore. Every shiny new solution carries its shadow. What liberates us today will tether us tomorrow. The real art is not just spotting the innovation, but spotting the irritation it will breed. Because if history is any guide, the future will be dazzling, lucrative, and deeply, gloriously annoying.
Review