Upon reading the Introduction to Six Degrees by Duncan Watts, I found myself thinking how much we as a contemporary society enjoy a new (or old) piece of technology that makes our lives more convenient and/or comfortable.

I have been asked to house sit for my Dad’s friends for a couple of weeks and some of the reasons I said yes include: the remote control windows and blinds, the Apple TV, the coffee machine and the amazing heating, as well as a chance at autonomy for a bit.

I can’t think of many people I know who would voluntarily say “I would love to move to a desert island and live with no technology for the rest of my life”. People might say they would like to do this for a bit but then come back to the reality that is this age of technology.

I can safely say I enjoy my comforts. Being able to turn on the TV when I am at home on a sick day seems essential. As does being able to check what’s going on in the news on my way to uni on my phone, and for these reasons I agree that power plants seem to be even more vital than roads at this point in time.

Let’s be honest in the future roads could be replaced with something high-tech who knows.. Or maybe we will all be driving flying cars.

Whatever the next major invention may be, you can guarantee there will be people lining up to be the first to try it, as we have seen with Apple products. People have a fascination with the new and the shiny.