Technology

I’ve been thinking a lot about boredom lately—specifically, how we’ve become so good at avoiding it. We reach for our phones at the slightest hint of downtime, filling every possible moment with scrolling, tapping, and consuming. It’s as if we’ve collectively decided that being alone with our thoughts is some kind of punishment to be avoided at all costs.

Take a walk on any given day these days, and instead of staring at your phone, try looking around. If you want to do this on hard mode, leave the phone at home if you can manage. You might discover a fascinating world unfolding around you that many of us miss while scrolling through our digital lives.

Thought leaders worldwide have been weighing in on the AI mania that has gripped the world. There are many fascinating predictions spanning from doomsday scenarios to utopian futures. But amid all this speculation, one principle remains constant: biology will self-correct. Biology is the original technology—it has been around for 3.7 billion years and has had a remarkably long time to perfect itself. The elegant mechanism of evolution ensures that the system is self-correcting: unsuccessful adaptations fade away, while beneficial mutations persist and flourish. Humans have certainly influenced this process, but the fundamental principles remain operational. We often attempt to predict winners and losers in this evolutionary race, but ultimately nature has the final say.

When most people contemplate technology, their minds immediately conjure sci-fi spectacles: humanoid robots, sentient AI, and interplanetary travel. But technology extends far beyond these futuristic tropes. At its essence, technology represents our methodical manipulation of the environment to serve human needs. Through this fundamental lens, cities themselves emerge as perhaps humanity’s most sophisticated and consequential technological achievement.

John Maynard Keynes coined the term “animal spirits” to describe the human emotions that drive consumer confidence. In today’s AI-saturated landscape, we’re witnessing new animal spirits emerge as we collectively lose touch with reality and cheer for an algorithmically-driven future filled with generated clickbait, mediocre art, fabricated “facts,” and an endless stream of low-quality content.

There’s a trope in New York City that you can identify tourists from their propensity to walk around staring up at the tall buildings. This isn’t necessarily meant to be interpreted literally, but rather it’s more about the fact that the tourists are fully present—taken aback by everything to look at, much of which is in the upward direction depending on where you are in the city.

Humans have accomplished remarkable things throughout our history. Yet today, despite these achievements, we appear to be backsliding while the world burns. We face enormous challenges with little evidence of meaningful progress beyond political and corporate greenwashing campaigns designed to keep consumption—“business as usual”—humming along. Van Gogh’s Starry Night

Tools are often cited as an example of what separates humans from most other animals. And while it’s true that other animals also use tools, humans are a bit unique in that we’ve also developed tools that make tools. My dogs (I have two, Doge and Walter) occasionally utilize tools, but due to their lack of opposable thumbs their tool usage is quite limited. My dogs’ use of tools tends to be limited to acts which involve food or play.

In an era where companies eagerly collect your private data—sometimes transparently, sometimes not—protecting your digital privacy has become increasingly challenging. While governments often facilitate rather than prevent this data collection, there are still meaningful steps we can take to maintain some control over our personal information. Though achieving complete privacy without disconnecting entirely from modern society is nearly impossible, implementing strategic privacy practices can significantly reduce your digital footprint.

I realize this is a click-baity subject, but I couldn’t help myself. There’s so much confusion online about VR, the “metaverse,” Facebook’s pivot, and the cringeworthy marketing content (which you can skip unless you love buzzwords and egregious use of terms like “collaboration” and “AI”). The whole thing is oddly reminiscent of an episode of Star Trek.