“It’s convenient but inconvenient, comfortable but unpleasant, efficient but extremely dangerous!”
From birth control pills to flush toilets, apartments, air conditioning, platform work, and airplanes.
A dizzying social history unfolded by the kings of innovation.

Our lives depend on amazing innovations.
The innovative technologies and objects explored in this book—flushing toilets, plastics, smartphones, air conditioners, platform labor, airplanes—are part of the vast hamster wheel of modern civilization.
We, who live comfortable lives, cannot easily get off that smoothly spinning hamster wheel.
In the face of technologies and objects that promise to benefit the world and provide a bright future, individuals are simply overwhelmed by their convenience.
It is not just a matter of simple expectations and admiration.
Modern people's daily lives are filled with the fear of 'what would I do without this?'


"The Sociology of Things That Look Cool" is a book that examines the innovative technologies and hidden aspects of modern life through the lens of sociology.
Sociologist Chan-ho Oh, who has consistently written articles that reveal the relationship between individuals and society in a three-dimensional way by tracing the seeds of discrimination and hatred in everyday life, raises several questions using the keyword of "innovation" and examines the complex relationships among technology, society, and individuals that are intertwined like a thread.


Why is it innovation? With less inconvenience, has convenience increased? Has convenience brought about more inconvenience? Has innovation improved everyone? How has the context of inequality, discrimination, and hatred changed? The author examines the invisible, easily overlooked aspects of convenience and comfort, and points out concerns about the social frenzy surrounding "innovation."

As we went through the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution, people repeated their expectations and admiration.
We say, “I wish this could be developed,” or “Wow, there’s so much out there.”
I live my life saying countless times, “The world has become a better place.”
It's thrilling to feel how one technology can make life easier right away.
Would you frown in front of something that benefits people?
This is probably why the words science, technology, and innovation are naturally entangled and floating around.
The word innovation itself is full of positive will and enthusiasm.
The English word 'innovation' exudes both freshness and exhilaration.
So it is easily defined as noble.
This leads to the idea that innovation should not be criticized.
Under this atmosphere, individuals are simply busy being grateful for the convenience.
It doesn't really ask whether it's innovative.
Questions and concerns about the convenient present do not deny technological advancement.
The intention is simply to reflect and improve.
But it is not accepted that way.

--- From "Prologue: There is no time machine"

Thanks to the birth control pill, women have become free from sex.
But because of the birth control pill, I'm still not free from sex.
As the expression, “If you just take the pill, you won’t have to worry,” has become commonplace, it has also become natural for women to take birth control pills regularly and prevent pregnancy on their own.
When a woman is worried about an unplanned pregnancy, questions like who the man is, why he didn't use contraception, and whether he wanted to have sex even though he said he was anxious because he was fertile, should be asked, but instead, the question "Why didn't you take the contraceptive pill?" appears.
But “women cannot become pregnant on their own.”
--- 「Chapter 2.
(Woman) Is it okay? (Man) It's okay!

Didn't Chico Mendes, the worker and environmental activist who was assassinated by a plantation owner while trying to raise awareness about environmental destruction in the Amazon, say this?
Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.
without class struggle is just gardening).
Is this radical? I won't interpret it by using the words "class" and "struggle."
The point is, it doesn't work to support inequality, praise competition, and worry about the environment.
If fighting inconvenient capitalism is uncomfortable, it's probably better to believe that all these environmental concerns are just conspiracy theories.
You can refrain from using paper cups yourself, believing that incompetent people deserve to be eliminated, but dreaming of a world without disposable products 'while doing so' is a delusion.
--- 「Chapter 4.
From "It's become convenient, it's become terrible"

The concept of "deaths of despair," proposed by Nobel Prize winner in economics Angus Deaton and Princeton University professor emeritus Anne Case, provides clues to how Korean society should address the opioid problem.
'Despair' seeks to examine what causes people to make bad choices that lead to death, or even death.
The authors focus on the lives of low-educated, white, lower-class workers.
They manage to survive when the manufacturing industry holds up, but when an economic crisis hits, they collapse helplessly.


It may sound obvious, but this obviousness is followed by 'opioid addiction'.
Not being swept away by addiction is primarily a matter of personal will, but that will shrinks in inverse proportion to the magnitude of despair.
So it's social.
In the Korean edition of the book 『Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism』, which deals with the history of despair, the authors ask this question, saying that the suicide rate in Korea and the history of despair in the United States have similar backgrounds.
Are Koreans cut off from their 'social mooring'?
But I would like to ask this:
Does something like that exist?
Do you have it?
--- 「Chapter 5.
From "Give medicine, give a bottle"

Smartphones are getting smarter every year.
It was about 20 years ago that we were amazed to see a 300,000 pixel camera on our phones, but now it's 200 million pixels.
The capacity is also enormous.
There is no need to connect a cable to a computer to transfer all the data accumulated on your phone, such as photos, videos, and documents.
If you press this and that a few times, it will be automatically saved somewhere.
This neatness is sometimes interpreted as an eco-friendly behavior.
Even just looking at the photos, you can see that there is no need for paper like in the past.
I don't even collect them in thick albums.
So it would have destroyed the environment less.
Guillaume Pitron, author of How 'Likes' Are Destroying the Planet: The Geopolitics of Nations, Corporations, and the Environment Surrounding Digital Infrastructure, strongly warns that this is all an illusion.
The original title of this book is 'Digital Hell (L'Enfer numerique)', but the meaning of hell is much better expressed in the Korean version title.
Hell is made hotter by people who don't know it's hell.
--- 「Chapter 7.
From "Evolve, Regress"

So, apartments are a social problem, but for the same reason, people inevitably prefer apartments, so prices are bound to rise.
Those who are overwhelmed by sorrow are actively jumping into this vicious cycle, saying, "After experiencing it, I realized that real estate is the answer."
I agree with the idea that you need to find a smart apartment, that it should have a good brand, and that LH is absolutely not acceptable.
The apartment will laugh at this post.
Like a line from 『Concrete Utopia』 where the apartment appears in the first person.
“I am always defeated in the virtual world of discourse, but I am always victorious in the real world of material things.”
--- 「Chapter 9.
The more expensive it is, the more discrimination there is.

Exercise effectively increases the likelihood of not being lazy during the day, but that doesn't mean you're lazy on the other side.
However, society tends to give very positive evaluations to those who exercise, saying, “They are ‘people who take good care of themselves’ and ‘people who overcome pain and achieve mental victory.’”
When you transform your body through exercise, you will receive a lot of attention and praise.
It's sweet.
This sweetness crosses the line.
As the importance of exercise is highlighted, it seems that the benefits of exercise can be more freely explained to people than other benefits.
When it comes to encouraging people to exercise, we often skip over the courtesy that should exist between people.
(…) I understand the excitement of those who want to talk about the effects of exercise.
But should the testimony that exercise has cleared one's mind lead to the 'unclear' logic that those who do not exercise are not clear-minded?
--- 「Chapter 10.
From "When You Take Care of Your Health, When Health Becomes an Obsession"

When society is unequal, the determination of those who can turn on the air conditioner at any time to "not turn it on" coexists with the complaints of those who cannot turn it on no matter how hot it is.
We cannot turn back the temperature of the Earth by ignoring this essence and only highlighting air conditioning as the main culprit of global warming and by focusing on those who have the will to not turn on the air conditioning as being 'eco-friendly'.
(…) So the answer is not in the air conditioner.
The question to ask is, 'Why can't we live without air conditioning?'
Furthermore, we must clearly recognize that being insensitive to inequality will not solve anything.
Perhaps those who read this will feel frustrated and ask, 'So what do you want me to do?'
The idea is to put that stuffiness into the context of air conditioning.
This isn't to say we should destroy air conditioning, but rather to warn against overusing the term "great invention" while being obsessed with the peripheral sensation of momentary comfort, thereby losing sight of the responsible questions we must ask for future generations.
--- 「Chapter 11.
From "I'm getting cool, we're getting hot"

Protesting against injustice and hoping for improvement feels empty when you make a living through platform work.
So, there is only one choice left.
Either work or not.
Yet, this terrible reality is often disguised as 'logic' and inevitably appears in every discussion about improving the treatment of these workers.
College students and even middle school students do this.
“If you don’t like it, you can just not do it.
“Who forced you to do it?” (…) As the word innovation became more prevalent, labor became more clearly defined.
It became clear what I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do.
When a few people create a digital platform, the majority of workers are more controlled and earn more money than before.
“If you don’t like it, don’t do it!” is nothing more than a lament that ignores this structure.
No matter how innovative one side may be, the other side should not become hell.
--- 「Chapter 14.
“Consumers are getting better, workers are getting worse”

If there were no airplanes, wouldn't 'overseas' (海外) remain an unknown space far out on the sea for many people, just as the Chinese characters say?
Before the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 4.5 billion people took airplanes worldwide.
1.4 billion people travel abroad for tourism purposes, 58 percent of which travel by air.
With the world becoming increasingly interconnected, has there always been a virtuous cycle? Barcelona, ​​with its 30 million annual visitors, is filled with signs like "Tourism kills the city" and "Tourist go home!"
A large stone near the observation deck of Park Guell, which offers a good view of Gaudi's cathedral, has become a hot topic with the words "Tourist: your luxury trip my daily misery" written on it.
One person's lucky trip is another person's daily misfortune.

--- 「Chapter 15.
“There are many places to go, and the places you go are destroyed.”