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Charlice Hurst's avatar

I’ve been thinking about this as well. I can get done in an hour what might have taken days, weeks, or months. Yet, when I’m finished, I’m looking for the next thing to do. AI allows us to raise the bar on ourselves many orders of magnitude more than past disruptive tech. It’s interesting that John Maynard Keynes’ expectation of tech was that it would increase efficiency to a degree that we’d have a surfeit of leisure time. He wrung his hands about what society would do with so many citizens having so little to do. He underestimated, however, just how very driven we are to fill up our time with activities that make us feel useful. He also must not have expected capitalism to morph into a machine that demanded constant growth. Anyway, I’m with you. Use the tools to free us for more depth and connection.

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Kim Doyal's avatar

Thank you, Charlice,

Apologies for the belated reply - I had a little health scare and was mostly offline for the last 10 days.

Thanks for sharing what John Maynard Keynes said. The capitalistic machine needs us tethered to it to sustain what it wants (bear with me for referring to it like a sentient being, lol).

I've read a few articles where they've tested that people are more productive with a 4-day workweek, quality of life goes up, and people are happier (obvs this wasn't tested in the US). The problem with that is that then people don't need to be so connected to devices, conveniences (DoorDash, streaming, groceries delivered, etc.) and that hurts the bottom line.

For what it's worth, I feel like there's a shift (in the right direction). I'm cautiously optimistic,

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Bonnie Marcus's avatar

Love this: just because we can do more, doesn't mean we should!!

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Charity Erickson's avatar

The question is how we can connect when people are already so overwhelmed? I wonder if there will be a coming trend towards more analog connections than digital ones 🤔

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

This is something I've been thinking a lot about too. Just in terms of now we're able to do so much more, and there's that pressure to continue at that level.

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