Has efficiency made people happier?

October 7th is Barcode Day. According to trivia books, the patent for the barcode was granted in the United States on October 7, 1952. The barcode was invented in 1949 by Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland, graduate students at Drexel University in Pennsylvania. Later, in 1967, an American food chain put it into practical use as a measure to eliminate lines at cash registers. A barcode is an identifier that represents numbers and letters by the thickness of striped lines. It converts information such as numbers, letters, and symbols into a one-dimensional code according to certain rules. In addition, two-dimensional codes, which represent a large amount of information by arranging dots vertically and horizontally, are also widespread, with Denso Wave's QR code being a representative example. Common codes used for general merchandise include Japan's JAN code, Europe's EAN, and North America's UPC. For logistics purposes, codes like ITF, CODE39, CODE128, and NW-7 are employed. Postal services utilize codes such as the Customer Barcode. The Uniform Article Code consists of a country code (flag) of 2 or 3 digits, a manufacturer code of 5 or 7 digits, an item code of 5 or 3 digits, and a check digit to prevent errors. This system assigns a unique number to every product. When Japan joined the International EAN Association in 1978 (Showa 53), it was assigned country code 49. However, in 1992 (Heisei 4), the International EAN Association newly assigned 45, so Japan now has two country codes. That's all. While writing this, I suddenly wondered: When exactly did barcodes start flooding our surroundings? I can't recall at all (sweat... I distinctly remember that back in elementary school, when you went to the supermarket checkout, they almost always manually typed the price tags from the packages into the register... I Googled it and found AINIX Corporation's “History of Barcodes”: “In Japan, the first automated checking system using barcodes was tested in 1972 at Daiei and Mitsukoshi department stores. ~[omission]~ However, full-scale barcode adoption did not occur. This was because implementing POS required affixing barcode labels to every single product themselves.” "Then, in 1984, the major convenience store chain Seven-Eleven introduced a full-scale POS system and required all its product suppliers to source mark their items. At the time, Seven-Eleven had about 2,000 stores nationwide, so its influence was enormous, and the source marking ratio for food and sundries increased rapidly. This led to the spread of POS systems to department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, and specialty shops.“ The above is quoted verbatim from AINIX Corporation's ”History of Barcodes." As written above, it must be after 1984. Thinking about it, I probably started noticing them a while after I became aware of things. My personal impression is that it was from the late 80s onward. Lately, I often see them on payment slips, so it's like, “Oh, payment