Why is the technology to simplify our lives, so complicated?

We’ve been told for years that one of the key goals of technology was to simplify our life.  In fact, for many people the opposite has happened.  The combination of complexity, feature creep, and the ever updating world of new technology has made the complexity of the process sometimes not worth the effort.

Enter David Pogue.  He spent thirteen years  writing about personal technology for the NY Times.  He launched Yahoo Tech. He writes a monthly  column for Scientific America and created the Missing Manual computer book series. He’s won two Emmys, two Webby awards, and a Loeb award for journalism.

But most of all he is the undisputed master of how to harness the best of technology to serve us and not the other way around.  He does it in a way that is both useful and humorous in his new book Pogue's Basics: Essential Tips and Shortcuts (That No One Bothers to Tell You) for Simplifying the Technology in Your Life.

My conversation with David Pogue: