This isn't so much a response but more a comment on form.

This isn't really a question that can have a simple historical answer because it's both incredibly normative (why "curse" instead of "blessing"? Is someone to "blame" for a good thing?) and working off a very debatable (and debated) set of assumptions. Are we in fact living under a "curse of efficiency"? I personally don't really think so, but if I went indepth on any of these questions, I'd be going against the spirit of this sub. And therein lies the issue.

This is a question you might have more success with if you rephrased it into something a historian could answer, or if you took it to another more appropriate subreddit like perhaps /r/askphilosophy.