On the Sins of Our Time

We are lonelier now than we've ever been in recorded history.

One dataset shows we are spending up to 3.5 hours per day on our phones, 8x of what was in 2008.

We wake up and stare at our hand mirrors with walls of colorful distractions telling us what to think or react to in which order – sorted by most probably to keep us drawn in.

I am reminded of a cartoon that had two friends asking one another, "What are you mad at today?" asks one, and the other friend responds, "I haven't opened my phone yet."

Newsfeed/home feed/algorithm should have a better name. Something like thoughtstream.

Many of us head to work, open our laptops, and increasingly ask machines to think for us.

Even as I use AI models now to dramatically increase my output I live a torn day, wondering if the awesome increase in the productivity is worth the cognitive decline of my generation.

At the same time, life is so brief, and we only have so much time to present true focus. Will I really miss managing config files on a Sunday morning?

I'm sure that the developers of before struggling to get basic websites and apps from books, poorly written documentation, no widespread forums, would have cherished to multiply their ideas into reality–spending less time using a picking axe, and more time mining their mountains of ideas.

At the same time, I'm less concerned over the exponential increase in artificial intelligence but rather the logarithmic decay of our own minds, of our own writing, of our own thinking, of our own bonding.

Sure there will be the people that will push the limits of biology, physics, manufacturing, and technology. I wonder, though, will we get to a point where we grow weary of feeds picking for us, models thinking for us, algorithms choosing for us? Will we say f*ck it, I want to read a random book, play songs that a DJ spun up not because it was optimizing to my preferences, but because that human felt like that this exact day.

It is clear that we are in a impossible contest between a behemoth of a data center and an enormously well-tested precise algorithm deployed directly against a brain remotely distant from a primate.

In an age of distraction, it almost feels like boredom is a virtue because it implies that you've consciously stood away from the things that will rob you of a 5-minute walk in the park here, of a moment of watching the leaves rustle amidst the breeze, or watching an ant clean itself on a leaf.

If Covid showed me what disconnection can do for cognitive development of young babies in every domain what will it do when it's fully taken effect? In math and reading students did worse in 2022 than in 2020.

Simultaneously, I often feel surrounded by pessimist or Luddite types that fear a world were thinking and computation is made faster and easier that society will be jobless, abjectly poor, and social disarray. Then we have these dreamy optimists, that claim all illnesses will be solved and there won't be any real impact not only society but to the future generations of humans.

Today we live in an exciting, may I say delicious collective bittersweetness and it's such an honor to be part of it.

How will I look back on this?

What is the antidote to the above vices?

• To apathy and disinterest, it is clear that caring, that giving a f*ck, will be something that I will value more than ever.
• To disconnection and isolation, hangouts with friends under moonlights will be what I most wish to have. Every minute of screen time I need to replace with friends and family time.
• To sluggishness and hebetude, I will be mindful to delegate execution, not knowledge or thinking, and toe the balance between getting to the insight and also not missing the minutae.