Where technology is concerned: “Information needs expand to fill available bandwidth.”
Where we used to have to fill in a one-page form, when automation arrived to make it quicker for us to fill in that form, very soon a ten-page form was required.
Reference: AI’s False Time-Saving Promise. Or Why AI Is Like The Vacuum CleanerBy Martin Gutmann, forbes.com, Nov 11, 2024. An article about how new “time-saving” technologies, such as vacuum cleaners, then computers, email, and now AI, increased workloads rather than reducing them.
Also tangentially related is Jevons Paradox, in which technology that increases efficiency creates an overall increase in resource consumption, rather than a decrease.