>From TBCR: We have far more technology than any other human generation in history, and it allows us to do things in a fraction of the time that our ancient ancestors did. It must surely follow that we’re the most relaxed generation of all time. Agree?
You might find that claim dubious, but if adverts are to be believed, AI, digital payments, self-driving cars and automation in general is only there to make our lives *easier. *We carry in our pockets a powerful computer that can take on the role of your personal navigator, translator, matchmaker, meditation teacher, and banker. With so many of our tasks automated, our leisure time must have expanded greatly. Right? It matters how we frame this question. If you ask ‘are we working less than before’, research is ambiguous. In rich countries people work less than labourers who toiled during the 19th century industrial revolution, but more than our ancient ancestors. If you ask ‘are our lives more leisurely than ever’, the answer is less ambiguous. Many people feel their lives are frenetic. We’re not only expected to work a lot. We’re expected to* consume* a lot. Ask ‘are we more chilled out than ever?’ and the answer is no. People are strung out, stressed out, and burned out. There’s more to work than the amount of time spent doing it. Carving a wooden door frame for ten hours in the 1600s is a very different emotional experience to jumping between a hundred emails, meetings and micro-tasks for four hours in 2023. Levels of workplace burnout have skyrocketed. We might think we’ve escaped Charles Dickens’ 19th century sweatshop dystopia, but our global economy now apportions drudge-work to labourers in the Global South while middle-class workers plug into an attention-burning digital matrix that yokes us far beyond ordinary work hours. There’s all sorts of ‘half-work’ going on, such as checking emails while eating breakfast, and promoting yourself via Instagram while on holiday. Even our consumption has become unpaid work: every act of buying something with a card, watching a streaming show, or using Google Maps to get to a concert produces data that will train AIs for big tech. It’s easy to brush these off as unintended by-products of digital life, a necessary downside to the great benefits brought to us by tech. To truly understand our predicament, however, requires us to look at this systemically. We don’t just live in any economy. We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff. KR: How hard would it have been when shruti was in vogue? With partial palm leaves, smrithi became comfortable. However, the old gen would have praised only the shruti. So every stage in life. When computers came in, I don't know how many members of the group would have learnt BASIC program? The computer was like a cell phone size and a black and white small screen blinker. And it was so fast the programs came in and before mastering one , the next came. Many in the dept were telling the same comments. Many said who will do all these or I don't know and I will not learn since I am going to retire, so on and so forth. So digital life has come to stay . We have to get along. Or else we will be only left behind. KR IRS 11 9 23 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZoojNVyu1pZ0nJ2gGZAqj7jNVMnfEqVNdujhsdSTJoEfzA%40mail.gmail.com.
