Tim Howell’s Weblog

Not really technology related, although there are parallels. The New York Times recently had a great article bemoaning how modern society was suffering an “epidemic of diagnoses.” Or, in other words, despite the fact Americans are living longer - as are we here in New Zealand - more of us are being told we are sick:

Most of us experience physical or emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered symptoms of disease. Everyday experiences like insomnia, sadness, twitchy legs and impaired sex drive now become diagnoses: sleep disorder, depression, restless leg syndrome and sexual dysfunction.

Perhaps most worrisome is the medicalization of childhood. If children cough after exercising, they have asthma; if they have trouble reading, they are dyslexic; if they are unhappy, they are depressed; and if they alternate between unhappiness and liveliness, they have bipolar disorder. While these diagnoses may benefit the few with severe symptoms, one has to wonder about the effect on the many whose symptoms are mild, intermittent or transient.

And the parallels for the technology industry? We’re all told, especially in the Web 2.0 era of Web 2.0, that there are solutions out there, but are they really solving the problems we need to solve?