At my first job, the company's mission motto was 'Improving Lives with Technology'. At the time, I thought it was shitty corporate-speak, but as I've gotten older, I've come to think that that's my personal mission statement. ---- What got me thinking about this was a conversation with a friend about Fitbit, and how I was considering one for tracking my exercise. My thought was that having the goals would motivate me more, in addition to requiring the exercise since I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. My friend, on the other hand, mentioned that it was somewhat silly to have a device that reminded you to exercise. Why not just set a timer for 30 minutes and go until it dings? But the timer is a device helping you, too. They're both technology helping you accomplish a task - one simply helps you timebox, the other gives you detailed data. However, that data is of no use if you're not acting on it, which I think is where trackers like Fitbit could certainly be seen as superfluous baubles. ---- Another thing that got me thinking about this was [Jim Dalrymple's review of the Apple Watch](http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/06/16/apple-watch-my-most-personal-review-ever/). The meat of the review is about how the watch helped him accomplish an astounding change in behavior. I think this is a great thing, and a perfect example of technology improving lives. I don't think these kinds of results are limited to the Apple Watch, or even Apple specifically, though - a Fitbit, Jawbone Up, or any one of a number of other trackers could do the same thing. In this scenario, the one that introduces the least friction is best. ---- But even my own career work has been about improving lives with technology - I've worked as a software developer for half a decade now, and I was doing computer phone support, repair, and network administration for six years before that. What I've found out about myself is that I like being a [force multiplier](https://twitter.com/palendae/status/487814907748827136) for developers and other technologists. It's closer to 'dogfooding' my own problems, and I feel better trying to help technical people overcome their problems, which in turn (hopefully) helps less technical people use technology more successfully. So, my team's project for [deploying OpenStack with Ansible](http://git.openstack.org/cgit/stackforge/os-ansible-deployment) and the more specific task of helping our internal support team using it to help customers falls right in line with that. ---- Improving lives is also admittedly incredibly vague and broad. But I think that's ok. A video game can improve your life if it's bringing you enjoyment. ---- By the opposite token, I think technology that actively hampers people when they're trying to get something done is bad. If your technology is hard to use and makes a user's life harder, whether that user is a developer trying to understand your API without documentation, or an office worker who can't find something in a confusing GUI, it's toxic.