Timothy Taylor writes,
Personal habits and public policies regarding cleanliness changed so much in the 19th and into the early 20th century that historians sometimes write of a “sanitation revolution,” which led to dramatic improvements in public health. It’s time to ramp up a “chronic disease revolution,” which would include the health care system but also reach beyond it. Modern information technology, and the coming arrival of the “Internet-of-things” will open up new possibilities here. A pillbox could be wired into the Internet, and if it isn’t opened at the appropriate times during the day, the person would receive a text or email, and then a phone call, and then maybe a personal visit of reminder. It’s now possible for a home machine to take a small blood sample from a diabetic, analyze that sample, and send in the results. Information technology makes it much easier to have interactive systems that offer reminders about diet or exercise. The benefits from improved management of chronic conditions is potentially very large.
Taylor is calling for an increase in conscientiousness, with the aid of technology. The late Gary Becker was fond of saying that young people behave as if they expect that in their lifetimes medications will be able to undo the adverse impact of overeating–and they are probably right. So Becker was arguing that technology may allow people to do away with conscientiousness.
There are different ways to look at this:
For some people, conscientiousness requires an exertion of internal discipline and willpower which is treated as a cost. A technological supervisor which externally compels beneficial behavior chosen in a non-tempted period of per-commitment is like a labor-reduction innovation that reduces time-inconsistency.
On the other hand, some people are born to be either conscientious or impulsive. Technology could help to reduce the natural genetic inequality / privilege / advantage that the abstemious and driven have enjoyed the indulgent and indolent.
On the other foot, there is risk-compensation and the Peltzman effect. If people adjust their behaviors to always try to hit their utility-curve set-point / sweet-spot for a certain amount of pleasure and risk, then technological assistance will be somewhat self-neutralizing as with safety regulations.
On the final foot, some of conscientiousness is a trained and perishable skill, so like human capital with rapid depreciation. When you have recourse to google translate on your smartphone, you don’t have to exercise a foreign language as much or as intensively, and even ‘immersion’ is ineffective. To the extent we can develop character and cultivate a love of rigor and self-mastery in an individual such that they work to maintain their own conscientiousness in a highly effective state, then ubiquitous technological assistants only mean that we will live in a society utterly dependent on those innovations for even ‘normal’ amounts of behavioral regulation. Take away the innovations for a moment and you’re left with some very maladjusted humans, like asking modern teens to do without electronics for an extended period.