One of the most fascinating observations around society’s use of technology is Jevons Paradox. It works this way: as technology advances, things get more efficient. As things get more efficient, one would assume that you’d use less of it. But actually what winds up happening is that society often uses more of it.
The Paradox
Here’s the backstory: William Stanley Jevons was a 19th-century economist. During his time, coal was the main source of energy driving the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Steam engines, which powered factories, trains, and ships, were becoming much more fuel-efficient. It’s natural to expect that this would reduce coal consumption.
But Jevons observed the opposite. As steam engines became more efficient and used less coal to do the same work, the demand for coal increased. Why? Because cheaper and more efficient steam engines encouraged their widespread use across more industries and applications. This made coal even more essential to the economy.
Jevons wrote, “It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” This observation became one of his major contributions to economics and energy studies.
Cameras on Phones
OK, you might say, but how does that relate to cameras on phones?
Here’s how. Visualize, in your mind, a basic phone from the 1980s. Then visualize a basic camera from that same era. The two devices were so different from each other that you might as well try to elucidate the differences between a fish and a bicycle. Fast forward to today, and often the biggest selling point of a phone today is its camera. And today, by some estimates, the number of photos taken using smartphone cameras over the past couple of years alone are greater than all of the photos ever taken on film camera in all of human history.
The availability of new technologies can generate demand at levels that are impossible to predict. And this demand arises because of the confluence of two factors: convenience and quality. If there is a hidden need for something, if a technology arises that makes it convenient to address that need in a good-enough manner, that hidden need is now visible in the form of increased demand. And the higher that a technology can score on both convenience (let’s include speed in here) and on quality, the likely it is to generate higher demand, if the hidden need is there. Put another way, technology can make previously impossible things — that people have wanted to do but couldn’t — possible.
Great Summaries Fast
You may be seeing how this relates to AI summaries.
As an attorney, you know there are few things more stressful and high-stakes than a trial. You rightly put every ounce of effort into preparing for trial every way you can, to enable your client to prevail. But trials often last multiple days, and you want to know that you’re on top of your preparation game for tomorrow’s trial day based on what happened in court today. So, you’ve always thought about how fantastic it would be if you could get a high-quality summary of all the day’s events and insights — fast — to help enhance and accelerate your preparation for tomorrow. Better yet, what about getting a synthesis of ALL prior trial days to help you better prep for tomorrow?
There was simply no way to meet this hidden need. Until now, with Threadeo Trial Summaries. As attorneys who have experienced them know, their quality is so high that you’d believe that they were written up by a trained paralegal. But a trained paralegal would take multiple hours to put together such a summary — far too late for you to be able to effectively include it in your prep for the next day. With Threadeo Trial Summaries, you can receive a high-quality summary within minutes of receiving the expedited rough from the court reporter. So by the time it takes you to scarf down your food delivery order, your insightful, rich, and actionable summary would be ready to go — for you to take your evening case prep to new heights. [By the way, all of this is true for arbitrations too. We offer Threadeo Arbitration Summaries for the same purpose].
Convenience and quality. And making 19th-century economists proud. That’s what we do here at Threadeo.