Technology is supposed to be about making life easier, about giving us what we want when we want it. Of course, it doesn't work out that way; usually technology is about shifting one immediate need at the expense of another. Americans are more efficient workers than ever before, but we also basically can't take vacations anymore because we're always tethered to our jobs thanks to technology. At some point, technology stops being about making life easier for us and starts being about making life easier for technology.

And some progress just happens because progress is expected to happen. Nobody was really complaining about the oppressive thickness of the last generation of iPhones, but the newer iPhones simply had to be thinner than ever before, because that's what Apple does. The new phones are so thin that the camera lens has to protrude out in front of the device, because physics makes it impossible for a decent camera lens to be as thin as the iPhone. And a small number of users are complaining that their iPhones are so thin that they're bending under pressure in their pockets. In response, commenters made jokes about their pants being too tight, as though it's your fault that you expected your phone to work the same way cell phones have always worked. As though the technology is blameless. Vlad Savov at The Verge points out that chasing after thinness is a weird and pointless game, when most of us would happily accept a few millimeters of extra thickness in exchange for a phone with a longer battery life, or a sturdier build. But what we want doesn't matter, right? They'll tell us what we want, because that's how this game works.

Kathleen Richards wrote a great post about Ello on Slog this morning. Because I'm curious about this sort of thing, I'm on Ello, but I don't have any illusions about it being the next Facebook. What I do notice is that Facebook and Twitter users can't stop talking about Ello. It's not because Ello is so good—in terms of privacy, ease of use, and capabilities, Google Plus is worlds ahead of it, and nobody's on Google Plus. It's because Ello appears to want users, whereas Facebook and Twitter both seem to want to drive users away. Twitter is teasing a huge change to their timeline function. Facebook is at war with drag queens. Twitter and Facebook are riddled with ads. Facebook is an incomprehensible mess that everyone tolerates because everyone is on Facebook and a social network only works if everyone is on it. Facebook and Twitter don't really want to drive users away, of course, but they did stop thinking about what the user wants and they started thinking exclusively about what would make life easier for Twitter and Facebook. We all want to feel wanted, and increasingly hardware and software designers don't seem to give a good goddamn what we want. They're too busy chasing each other around the Silicon Valley barnyard in search of money, bragging rights, and their own ridiculous expectations.