I have been spending some creative time on art-related projects, including a profile of my neighbor and artist here rather than writing on Homeward Bound. But I miss you, dear reader…so better late and imperfect than never and none at all. I present to you: The January Post.
Every year, I obsess about predictions. First, they are fun. Second, I love the future. Third, I hate surprises.
This year, 2024, the consensus seems to be shaping up around a few ideas: 1) The American ‘great experiment’ is going seriously sideways and it’s not going to be pretty for a few more years; 2) there will be more and more global political upheaval as more than 50 countries elect new governments in 2024, 3) form factor for technology is going to change; 4) old religion is going to find a new audience; and 5) it’s going to be a big year for space, comets, and more news about “nonhuman biologics.”
Of all these, I am most interested in radical changes in form factor. I cannot wait to untether myself from phones and laptops, among other things. In December, I wrote about AI and, well, I am not done.
This month, Apple revealed Vision Pro and I think you can start to see in part where we are going. Over the past weekend, I had a long and windy Zoom call conversation and we used Fathom, an AI note-taking assistant app, to capture notes—which were impressively good. Next, I made a little rotoscope video for my art class. Again, an AI video editor took a project that would have been hours and collapsed it into about 10 minutes. Technology’s form factor seems to be changing almost from week to week; I am hot for the velocity and convenience of all of it even as The Overwhelm also quietly builds like steam inside.
Finding the still point amidst all these rapid developments seems like a wise thing to do. But first a rumination. If you’ll follow me this way, please.
Changing the signature of all things
Here we are at the shore of the new thing: AI and other emerging technology as we have never known it. I am obsessed less with AI itself and more with the knock-on effects of it on people everywhere. I am always keen to get my arms around the new thing, to see around the corner to prepare. Then a conversation shattered that idea.
“You’re approaching this with the frame of autonomy,” said my Zoom oracle. “as if you have any control. You don’t.”
Damn, ok. Plan B. Look to the past to wrap my arms around the future. Or rather let it wrap its arms around me? What were the step changes that mattered most in the past? I am no Jared Diamond but I have been thinking a lot about lightness and darkness.
All the light I cannot see
It started as a sleeping issue: the light coming in over the top of my bedroom window from the parking lot, my hairy eyeball from a few too many Reels right before bed, and the orange numbers on my digital clock. I have a sleep mask, which I rip off most nights at some point. I do fall asleep but some small part of my brain knows the Light Drug is out there, waiting to be seen.
On-demand light — and now light pollution — is such a given that it’s hard to fathom life without it. I am pro-light, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also killing biodiversity and us, it’s dissolving the beauty of the night sky, and it’s never going back in the bottle. It’s also one of the most fundamental form factor changes humans have experienced; electricity and light bulbs extended time by 100% and allowed for the night to be as productive as the day. And yet we try to find our ways around it to stay sane: Zen practitioners who don’t use light for the first hour of the day, yogis who stare into the natural morning sun to activate the pineal gland and abstain from electric light, basic consumers like myself who think a pair of sharp-looking blue-light readers can make a difference in prolonged screen time.
If Thomas Edison’s lightbulb moment in January 1879 was one tipping point for our shared understanding of material light, time, and productivity, it feels like this year is another tipping point. We are once again departing linear time and entering some new hard-to-yet-understand era of exponential time as measured through insane leaps of progress and output. We are expanding the productivity of a minute by 1000%. If a machine can do in an hour, what it took a human to do in a day or a week—welp, there’s a step change for ya.
(When I was an undergrad, there was a course called “The Anthropology of Speed” which made us all laugh because we were actually on speed and we felt like the real experts. Nevertheless, that course was on to something…)
Stillness still works
Now back to that still point, we all need to find to cope. This year, so far, I have been trying about 20% harder to get on my meditation cushion every morning for a few minutes. Of course, meditation and the effort it takes to get on my zafu is the counter-point to everything I have just written about above. The five minutes on the timer seem achingly long; the seconds draw themselves out into the slowest tick-tick-tick. There is no productivity extension in the volume of time I spend here.
The irony of our wild future is that to go faster, we have to go slower. That of course is my opinion, and not an original one at that. I am still struggling to mentally make sense of where we are going, collectively and individually, and I just have to keep coming back to the powerlessness of the moment.
And maybe if I say it enough, it will be true: If the tech goes there, and does all that; we can be here and do all this. Maybe?
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