Daily Writing
natural language processing
LLMs confirm a hypothesis the tech world has had for decades. Their existence and rapid adoption signal a shift in cultural acceptance of a new kind of relationship that will shape life past this revolution. Their exponential improvement validates hopes for a more deeply integrated technological experience. But their irresponsible deployment indicates a hard road to cultivating a society that can humanely live and operate alongside this new innovation…
When engineers on the early Macintosh project imagined interaction with a computer, their first inclination was not towards the design of our current devices. The graphical interface was a compromise. It’s always been a stopgap of windows, folders, symbols, and a common design language that we’ve adjusted to over the decades. We often don’t realize it, but it’s not the most natural system for interacting with a tool. Scanning with our eyes, scrolling with our hands, clicking with curiosity. These are fine methods of completing tasks and consuming information, but our dream foresaw so much more.
They foresaw natural language processing. Science fiction has such a hold on our culture not just because it shows where we wish technology to go, but because it shows where technology will go. Jarvis in Iron Man, C3-PO in Star Wars, and HAL in 2001: a Space Odyssey. The dream of the futurist is to gain the ability to effortlessly converse with our devices. This device is now possible in the most general, empowered sense.
The model Siri and Alexa were built upon is antiquated with the invention of large language models. Voice assistants are dependent on voice commands, pre-programmed and reliant upon the user’s conformity to an unnatural language built by Apple and Amazon. “Hey Siri, turn on the lights,” is part of a set number of parameters the assistant is able to comprehend and act upon. If you ask something it hasn’t been given behaviors for, it replies with a simple admission of incompetence.
LLMs are not trained on code words tied to behaviors. Their power comes from predictive engines. Trained on language from the internet (that vast repository of human knowledge), they can decipher the queries put to it and respond with startling accuracy and uncanny prescience.
Already everyday people are realizing the dreams of Kubrick and Lucas by embedding LLMs into speech-to-text voice assistants to achieve the near-perfect synthesis of Siri and a chatbot. This new linguistic interface invites a whole new class of responsibilities, abilities, and formative shifts in the life of the social being…
the modernist's superstition
Technique is to the modernist what superstition was to the medievalist.
It’s part of human nature to seek a silver bullet. We yearn for the quick fix. Call it that or the path of least resistance or lowering startup costs or reducing friction or productivity boosts- it’s all the same and it’s all the basis for technology’s fundamental precept. That of technique. Technique is what we’ve reached for since the time of Ford and Taylor. It’s what we seek to perfect in order to gain a semblance of control over life. It’s what we expect to give us a chance agains natural forces in our world.
The technical pervades all parts of life from work to leisure to relationship. Technique can be defined by its process dominated orientation. Our jobs are made up of functions like communications and task-completion, the setting of metrics and the impersonal treating of peers as a resource. Devices are the conduit through which we experience intimate connection and entertainment alike. We digest information and truth through technology that functions on principles of the technical. We throw ourselves into our systems with unconsciously machine-like motions praying they provide the results we designed them to get.
This behavior is not a far cry from a different kind of technique used centuries ago…
Superstition; n. 13th century
a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation…
Unsubstantiated religious beliefs were a regular part of life for the pre-modern human. Unexplainable forces warred across countries that were undefinably large. In a world where there be dragons, uncertainty was managed by ritualistic sacrifice and devotion. Practices were predicated upon the authenticity of the devotee, and deistic failings could be written off as a lack of faith to the process. The danger of this system are clear: when words and wards begin to fail, our inclination to show devotion tends toward sacrifice of the things we feel to be blocking our path to faith.
How far are we from a worldview whose foundation is the commitment of the user to the execution of esoteric principles? Do the techno-optimists on each coast represent the cultural spirit of our time? What if our loyalty to technological behaviors has enslaved us to a way of being that goes against the grain of human nature?
Some transcend this system. They choose to adopt paradigms instead of techniques. The tectonic shifts of culture have no effect upon those with solidified value systems, not technical systems. The reason for this is most simply stated by the French philosopher, Jacques Ellul. “No technique is possible when men are free.” The freedom found through limiting our consumption, desires, and behaviors disallows any practice that acts out of ignorance or trust in a convenient and omnipotent tool.
Contrary to our individualistic, antinomian culture’s ideal, we find freedom through restraint. Confucius said, “if a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him.“ The wisdom of the apostle Paul admonished, “you say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything.” This echoes the great orator Cicero who advises us to “let your desires be ruled by reason.”
These dictums display the posture of those who became free through the abolition of superstition and technique. They relied upon virtue and trust in a higher power they came to know deeply, whether that power was from within or without. Technique itself was unable to find a foothold in their lives.
from connection to entertainment
Social media has experienced a shift since 2020. As one writer put it, it’s taken a turn from social media to social media. Short-form video content and advertisements from mega-influencers and businesses dominate the platform. Personal updates and posts from your community have been relegated to a separate tab and downvoted by the algorithm. This change has been felt by all. Apps like Instagram and Facebook have joined the race to the bottom to gain user eyeballs and forgo user trust and experiences. In the wake of Twitter’s death (like many, I won’t say it), Instagram launched Threads to much initial praise. Many cited the neighborhood-like qualities the platform hosted as it released void of advertisement and snappy marketing to draw users. It was a place to exist and share your life through tweet-sized thoughts.
The entertainment and commodification of social platforms transforms experiences to prompt more anxiety, uncertainty, and self-judgement. Questions arise for the self-aware but social pressured user like,
What’s my caption? Are emojis still cool? Is it better to stay mysterious and let my pictures speak for themselves? Is this controversial at all and how can I make it more edgy? How will this change the way my followers see me?
Having not had social media for five years, I can’t speak on the matter with primacy. I can admit these are the questions I asked in the days before platforms became truly monetized and culture became self-loathingly obsessed. The truth is that these questions are not merely asked today, but poured over by any and all. From the rising content creator on Youtube or TikTok to the aspiring influencer on Instagram or Twitter (still not gonna do it), we all suffer under the unspoken social rules of the web.
You would think we would rail in protest at the highly commoditized, self-regulated, and over-consumptive posture we must take on these platforms. We should leave them, find alternatives, and build an online social graph that respects our time, attention, and humanity. Appreciating liberty and dignity, we abstain from such manipulative and demeaning chains. Yet we do not.
Because of social pressure, we stay. Because of justifications, we remain. We hurt ourselves (and others) time and time again. We contribute to bad faith conversation in a medium we know to be unproductive. We seek out validation consciously (and unconsciously) by wandering the minefield of likes and comments in our feed. We consume toxic content that makes us more enraged, jealous, anxious, and unkind. We loathe that we do it, but it’s what we do.
What purpose does a dying social platform serve us when it can no longer be called truly social?
Why are we justifying giving a massive portion of our time to a place that gives nothing back to us?
When do we feel is the appropriate time to pull the plug on the deadly self-experiment we miscalculated?
go light | re-innovate |
An innovative and daring new iPhone comes out in two weeks. The 15th of its kind. Bold and resourceful like the last many. It will traverse unprecedented fields of the attention economy and introduce awesome stakes in the global economy. The masses will flock to receive it like they did the Nazarene babe of old. Lives will be changed and hearts will be swayed, yet again…
In actuality, it will feature a new frame, an updated chip, improved camera zoom, and maybe a button on the side to shortcut your favorite apps. Not so revolutionary in the wake of its originator’s very existence. The smartphone has been incrementally cultivated over a decade and a half to give just enough to keep you wanting more. It provides everything you need and too much you don’t. Planned obsolescence combined with stellar marketing makes tens of millions of people upgrade every year.
And who wouldn’t love the hype cycle and “innovation” Apple showcases? I know I’ll be watching the keynote Tuesday as we are sufficiently whelmed (and simultaneously awed) at the restraint shown by Tim Cook et al. When a company this large showboats, eager eyes are held in rapt attention. Long have op-ed journalists noted the religious vibes many Apple or Samsung enthusiasts exude (read about the connection a 2013 investigator makes). For companies that are quick to throttle user experience and scam their customers, novitiates continue to pay dues at the altar of commerce Big Tech erects. This kind of power (and ensuing influence over our wallets) is a combination of more than just sticky features and incredible stage presence. Society does a dance for engineers at the top. It speaks to something deeply embedded…
Having a smartphone is part of Western culture. To live in an industrialized nation is to own a device. Social pressure and in-group dynamics necessitates up-to-date technology (especially among 16-35 year olds, those most at risk for the slew of mental health concerns smartphones impact) and the integration of your life with your tech. This has become a social norm that employers, educators, and everyday people expect.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if you lived your life without a smartphone? What if social media wasn’t a part of your morning routine? What if you owned a device that doesn’t release a new model every year? What if you could do meaningful work, not just with, but because of a simple, intentional, and unique tool? What if your phone did not beg your attention but sought to redirect it to those things that matter?
//go light
a defiance of the contemporary
In the midst of a culture of hustle, monetization, and frenetic energy, “a hobby is a defiance of the contemporary.” Aldo Leopold, famed conservationist and ethicist, reminds us of the thing that made our childhood pure: unadulterated joy sought in doing something with value apparent only to our small selves. We play in the dirt, embrace every quirk, and live like the sun will never set on our day. Pretending to be explorers, we write neural pathways in the fresh dirt of our minds. We carve pathways, overgrown in later years, to be restored when we seek the irrational zeal of our younger years. Our children are eternal hobbyists.
Technology trains us to have jobs not hobbies. It heaps responsibilities atop labor. Messages, emails, calendars, communication productivity apps, in an online experience built to entice us with advertisement and jealousy to profit so we spend. We are taught the utility of technology even in social platforms that gamify the race to build networks. Our humanity is hijacked. So enraptured with “features,” we let go of our child-like wonder. The hobby is an assertion of values not tied to industry, but inherent to the soul.
“The man who can’t enjoy his leisure is ignorant,” writes Leopold. I ask, how many of us enjoy scrolling, bingeing, or messaging? Who else feels that the digital world stole our ability to sit still and do a crossword puzzle? When will we admit that sporadic forays into the real world are inferior to our habitual use of devices?
To reclaim what we have lost, take up something without rational justification for its existence. Knit impractical clothing, read for fun, pencil-sketch trees. Your hobby need not be tied to a preexisting skill, interest, or need. To wish to do something is grounds enough for a hobby. We need embodied practices to refresh our focus and restore our awe. Without the focus and mindfulness of a true hobby, we find ourselves swept away in the industry and consumption that comes along with technology’s possession.
LLM reflections Ⅱ
…Art.
The world of the artist and creative will be forever impacted by the multi-modal application of this new technology. Like when pigmentation democratized paints, Microsoft Word unlocked a treasure trove of shared writing, and Adobe launched a new genre of craftsmanship, the arts and AI are on the verge of breakthrough. Already, authors are writing books and researchers are prompting informative summaries on ChatGPT. Every minute, a never before seen image is generated using DALLE-2 or MidJourney while the integration of these tools is speeding up freelance creative’s processes tenfold.
Legal battles of profit and provenance of the images, texts, and ideas generated by these tools is underway. These rulings matter, but not as much as what these tools will do to artistic spaces. The zeitgeist has shifted. New tools and new kinds of work have proven a point more than ever before: anyone can make art. The startup cost continues to diminish as the impact you can make when pairing tools within digital spaces continues to multiply. New generations, more than ever before, will reach for an instrument to create something beautiful. And we’ll all be there to enjoy it.
Economy.
Forecasted efficiency “booms” in technological productivity are not entirely overstated. LLMs will be one piece of the puzzle to restore the internet’s ability to be that long-foretold “boom” and clear the clutter of our screens by optimizing bespoke workflows. AI can’t create publishable articles from scratch but will provide researchers with summaries of relevant information. It won’t replace doctors but will streamline patient note generation from electronic medical-record entries. This will not impact the existence of certain jobs, but it will shift the operations of these jobs.
The surge in AI-powered tools has given awareness to the multitude of capabilities in all industries. Scientists are able to expedite research processes and come up with “alien” ideas outside the scope of human reasoning to attempt. Engineers can run simulations and calculations through a series of pre-programmed tests with massive datasets behind them. An amateur like myself can prompt chatbots for aid in creating website elements without any coding experience (many areas of this website were designed that way). LLMs give the curious mind a laser beam of focussed processing to point at whatever problem vexes them.
The risks are high: AI researchers have a conversational probability of doom (“p (doom)”) because of the dangers these algorithms pose. The need for unity on legal and ethical fronts is paramount: LLMs have the potential to bless or curse every industry, person, and area of life. But there is hope. More expert than Google, more collaborative than Youtube, LLMs are the next step in the future of the way we learn, work, and create worlds.
LLM reflections
Time for some reflection. Now that the hype cycle has plateaued. Now that the court cases are underway. Now that culture has said its piece and innovation has responded in kind. What are the stakes for ethical technology in this evolving world of large language models?
Misinformation.
We have to start here because of what these tools are… The Center for Humane Technology best relates our first contact with Artificial Intelligence. It was an interaction we tragically lost: the assimilation of ad-powered social media platforms into our society. This was an adoption fraught with ignorance, naivety, and false promises. Content curators, in the form of what we began to charmingly call “the algorithm,” became able to know us better than we knew ourselves.
Our second contact with large language models (LLMs) is in a pitched battle with pieces and factions strewn across a global board. LLMs are personal knowledge prediction engines. More than Google that showed us the web, more than “the algorithm” that served us ads, these seek to satiate our hunger for information. They tenaciously do this at times to our detriment.
The “lab coat effect” appears to apply to VC-hyped softwares as everyone from students to lawyers accepts a chatbot’s text as truth. The apt term “hallucination” is a benign example of LLM’s shortcomings. Getting the Eiffel Tower’s height wrong or misattributing accolades is harmless in isolation. What these mistakes will impact more and more are the intentional distribution of convincingly falsified information. Scammers, governments and guerrilla marketers. These bad actors will use LLM’s gains in efficiency and comprehension to turn profit and public unrest to a new level…
Education.
Years of tired, overextended, and too few students has taxed learning in the West. The unwilling partnership with technology has not aided the situation up to now, but simply smoothed over the cracks that were soon to break open. AI brings opportunities for the growth and improvement in areas where iPads, teaching softwares, and Google only complicated education. LLM-powered homework tutors, reflection with an AI partner, multi-lingual interpretation that benefits the reader and writer. The possibilities (and trajectory of AI in the industries students are bound for) are revolutionary.
The issues most raise is a short-term one. Homework assignments no longer work, essays written outside of class cannot be vetted, students becoming mindless “regurgitators” like LLMs. The hope of most innovators transcends these fears. With a truly disruptive technology used by all under twenty, the bubble holding back old education from new innovations may finally have to burst. When homework breaks for good, we’ll see conservators turn inward to shore up prohibitions or we’ll see innovators look to what the world is becoming and prepare a way for their students in the future...
create | consume
We live in a time when traditional media is being viciously usurped by new media. More than half of Americans entertainment comes from streaming and social platforms. Young adults are likely to scoff at the idea of cable and network television. Box office numbers have fallen far behind view, subscriber, and patron counts on alternative platforms. More kids today want to be Youtubers more than they want to be astronauts or scientists. There is a felt need to be seen in this rising generation.
Shaped by social media and parented by screens, the next generation has been taught about a cycle of create and consume. With the accessibility of a movie-quality camera and the ubiquity of film-making education online, anyone can join this dance and become an artist. The rise of the part-time Youtuber and combination of work and play in this space marks a new path for creativity and sufficiency.
Consumption can either fuel creation or paralyze an artist. It’s a necessary part of growing a project and finding inspiration, but it’s dangers are many and hidden. When we get in a pattern of sitting and watching, we lose the things that makes us artists, creators. The tool that enabled access to learning and abundance becomes the thing which restricts our ability to develop and share our work.
The design of platforms and devices seems to be at odds. When we see the “Create a post” button right next to our feed, crossed wires lead to indecision which always becomes the choice of the house: browse, scroll, consume. Our moment of doubt, insecurity, or fear can push us right back into the stream of content created… not by us.
Many creators choose to do their art in closed systems. Non-smartphone cameras, non-laptop typewriters, non-consumptive creator tools. They silo off practice from participation. This is the strength of analog tech like a journal. It allows you the focus and uninterrupted time to build worlds. Flow can only be found in the single-tasking focus brought about by the ruthless elimination of distractions (there’s a reason website/app blockers grew in popularity with the rise of online media). For the creator looking to tap into this prolific era’s resources, finding this space is essential.
For those who eschew the creative impulse, what is your relationship to this inevitable cycle? Are you creating from your consumption? Does beauty flow from your abundance? Or does energy find its way to you at the end of a line, cut off from further cultivation in the river of creation?
Find your voice by hearing the voice of others, but don’t dwell here. Build a system that opens your time and energy to the creation of something that matters, simply to you or generously to others.
current with eternity
My tendency is to write about with grim malaise and skepticism at the future. I write of the dangers, misuses, and perversions of technology in our culture today. So quick and able to write of the bad, the good is swept away like breadcrumbs. Their trail being lost and hope of redemption being hidden.
Part of this is due to the widespread writing from those, like myself, critical and concerned with the direction of platforms, devices, and subcultures. When we imbibe pessimism, we inject it in our work. This problem is true for anyone living in the current digital ecosphere that encourages emotional over intellectual participation. Our feeds (both digital and analog) become the composition of our attitudes. And our attitudes become the tenor of our lives.
The truth is that life can be filled with abundant goodness not simply because of prohibition around devices. Fullness can be found in the careful restructuring of technology, knowing what it strives to be and helping it reach peak potential…
What do you really need from a phone? Communication, navigation, audio-entertainment. Is the rest just clutter? What alternative devices could augment your simplifying?
Could carrying around a pocket journal and pencil reshape your relationship to Google, note-taking, and information? Would your work benefit from a unique approach to knowledge-gathering that couples patience with permanency?
How does the entertainment in your life form you? Does the world of analog technology offer a healthier path to wholeness? Entertainment seeks to keep us current with world events, celebrities, and moments, but would recreation like reading and writing, music and painting keep you current with eternity?
Though it’s hard for me to admit, more important than quitting social media or getting rid of your smartphone is how we intentionally craft a life around values and people. So much can be extracted from the perks of instruments. Just as so much can be lost by the pitfalls of devices. Explore the effects, understand the history, and judge the baggage of integration as harshly as you can. Find what works for you, but ensure technologies are additive. It’s a choice we make, but it becomes something that makes us.
tools of our tools
To simplify the complex technology that is work, we must unpack the dual premise that, all work is predicated on the use of certain tools, and more importantly, that and all tools are elaborations of two original tools:
the shovel and axe.
Work is rooted in the act of turning something (material, ideas, value) into something else through activity. Work cannot be accomplished without the use of a tool. If you're an accountant, your tools are GAAP, financial technologies (money, debt, credits, and so on), and spreadsheets. If you're a plumber, your tools are the accoutrements of most tradesmen (a wrench, plumb-line, and, importantly, the education and skills required by the craft). Even more esoteric or abstract lines of work like philosophy, teaching, and preaching still use tools like cognition, reasoning, pedagogy, and exegesis. These disciplines each require a technology, whether developed through linguistics or material, to function.
For the second premise, we have to go back.
Leopold writes that when our earliest ancestors created the shovel, they became "givers" as they could plant trees or dig wells, posts, and foundations. When the axe was invented however, pioneers of work became "takers" as they chopped down those trees and unmade what was made.
These paragons, which certainly maintain primeval ancestors, designed the behaviors every technology follows: to give and take (this doesn't omit the potential for a shovel's misuse in attacking people or undermining structures, nor an axe's in creating grooves to loft scaffolding or chopping wood to supply lumber- these categorizations simply represent the philosophical intent primal tools indicated about the desire of humankind in labor).
The invention of language allows for fellowship in the same breath that the invention of class names the “plebeian” to strip away dignity. The printing press gives access while barbed wire takes interdependence. The Industrial Revolution rushed forward with the invention of the assembly line. This tool gave collaboration a new meaning but worked alongside labor tech to subjugate citizens to the clock and whistle. The era of efficiency began, but we didn't seem to be leading the charge.
At the end of the Industrial Revolution, Thoreau went so far as to call people "tools of their tools." Pre-modern civilization after the industrial revolution doubled-down, developing education and accreditation around people's ability to use tools well. An entire system of colleges, teachers, and thought leaders geared up a generation to be engineers and material scientists within every field. This was the direction economy, politics, and society ran through the 20th century as everything from entertainment to status roles to social justice was shaped by the tools individual's chose to wield.
The Digital Revolution, of course, changed everything.
Work became rooted in turning bits of information into more palatable, salable, and visual indexes of information.
Our tools became coopted by software. Our infrastructure became controlled by a cloud connection. Our interaction in the physical world became superfluous to digital education and social media's wholesale substitution. Our seasons became dependent on quarterly earnings and turnover, and our days became dominated by scrolling.
It's been said that if you don't pay for the product, you are the product. Even if we opt-out of certain platforms, we live in a world run by our tools, and those tools turn us into a commodity by mere osmosis with culture.
Smartphone owners are simultaneously the advertisement and the user. You are the unwitting developer team and update recipient. You are the vital extension of the product more than it is the extension of you.
You are a tool of your tools.
We once used tools with artistry and brilliance to create and reshape the earth. Dreaming larger than life, we shot for the moon and landed among the stars. Simple shovels were used for a day then set down to rest with no sovereignty over us. Now a device that fits in pockets controls our waking and sleeping with digital precision and ruthless abandon. When our work became under threat of “tool rule”, we still had weekends and nights to seek reprieve. In a world of digital devices, this escape becomes harder and harder to find with every device added to our ecosystem...
time unwound
Hour by hour. Day by day. We measure down to the second. We live by the minute. Never before has the history of civilization been as closely tracked as it is today. Digital calendars, algorithm-enhanced watches, virtual assistants pushing us from event to meeting to task. Our conception of time, and by extension space, is shaped by our interactions with technology.
“…no two cultures live conceptually in the same kind of time and space,” writes Lewis Mumford, the cultural historian and prophetic voice who best captured the development and technology and civilization up to the Computer Age. Our ideas about what time is differ greatly from those cultures not inundated with notifications, schedules, and maximization. Time is money, money is power. Versus time at the heart of existence.
At the beginning of all Jewish philosophy, time is one, eternal. Its division into seven days saw six become subservient to the one set aside for Shabbat Shalom (Sabbath peace). It taught Hebraic minds of the primacy of time over space. Abraham Joshua Heschel aids us: “The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments…” Money, power, and information are not the ultimate ends by which we “utilize” time. An architecture is created of time that encapsulates moment, experience, and encounter.
This too differs from certain indigenous people’s view of time. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains, “Nanabozho’s people know time as a circle. Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself… all things that were will come again.” Gratitude defines a culture in this conception of a time that returns to itself. When all the world is a gift in motion, your schedule becomes an open hand, waiting to give back as much as you receive.
The newest American experiment has been about reengineering our lives to a new kind of time. One defined by the habits of adding and saving time, closing it within boxes and looking to remove the constraints of “lesser hours” spent. It becomes a commodity to be spent, not a gift to be experienced.
The trouble with this paradigm, as is always the problem with deeply ingrained ways of thinking, it its end. The only logical conclusion of commoditizing time is commoditizing relationships, work, and our planet. A pernicious worldview takes hold; the unconscious habits therein are impossible to excise without first drawing out the demonic thought patterns rooted deep (“demonic” in our insensate desire to gain the power of gods without the love, prudence, and discipline of gods). Wendell Berry agrees in his exhortation that we must, “begin by giving up any idea that we can bring about these healings without fundamental changes in the way we think and live.”
The language of “spending time” and “earning an hour” must cease to so profoundly shape us. Our practice of treating time as a tool must make way for a restoration of time as sacredly cyclical, eternally evocative. Humanity’s hope is in the splendor of Sabbath, the blessing of a gift economy, and the restoration of time in the natural order of things.
We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things…
go light | a testament |
Secular historian paints a striking picture about the revolution that was the christian faith during the first four centuries. Tens of thousands flocked to the way of a dead, celibate, middle eastern teacher. Most changed every part of their lives because of what they came to know. The method through which this rabbi’s message and call was distributed was not typical. His followers didn’t begin a marketing campaign of propaganda or apologetics. They didn’t pair off and seek to convert three Romans for every christian at the time. Their was no mass gathering to ostentatiously announce the plans for the continuing ministry.
“They made the grace of God credible by a society of love and mutual care which astonished the pagans and was recognized as something entirely new…”
They lived in such a way that begged the question.
What’s the lesson here? The obvious thing to learn is that your life is the grounds for a message. Whether that message is cultivated or unintentional is up to the decisions you make. Our internal life is reflected in our external life, so even those choices we think no one can see are on full display in how we act, look, and speak. If you have a message to share, if you have a product to sell, if you have a desire to fulfill, the way you live your life will be all the marketing you need (for good or ill).
The less obvious lesson is that certain kinds of lifestyles have a magnetism to them. People recognize change and are drawn into a different story uncoerced. Deviation triggers double-takes. This is a pattern of technological innovation as much as it is a pattern of historical movements. The question we must ask is, “which direction of innovation do these trends go?”
The new, sensational, and addictive no longer turns heads because it’s commonplace. Every week “disruptive” platforms trying to eat TikTok’s lunch appear. “Novel” AI integrations circulate touting increased productivity, life-hacked profitability, or “insane (try inane) click-through-rates.”
The radically ordinary operates on a different kind of attention. A “slow attention” that works its way into the zeitgeist, not through flashy time-grabs or influencer click-bait, but through unique, relational investment. The person able to integrate technology in a way that prioritizes personhood over productivity draws a crowd. The crowd begins small. It sees something valuable and nudges its friends. They begin to gather and yearn for deeper experience. It makes a change and shares the results.
This has been my experience with choosing a divergent path. The slow grind of hearing testimony and becoming a testament works its way into every community to bring about thriving change.
//go light
getting to the bottom
In productivity and business spaces online, a great deal of attention and work is put toward unpacking the proposition of technology as a tool for organization, ideation, and execution. As someone deep in this niche, I’m generally a fan of the tips and tricks shared. I get sucked into the Desk Tour and 7 Habits Youtube videos. I grew up on Tim Ferris books and the historical concepts of optimization and efficiency blended with tech.
The trouble is that tech may be good at getting us on top of things in the short term, but it’s woefully deficient at getting us to the bottom of things in the long term.
Shallow ties and bad-faith conversation tactics abound in our digital forums. Our tools afford us a cursory review of these documents or those articles. They show us just enough of the widest possible range to prompt the feeling of comprehension without ever forcing us to undergo the laboring of comprehension.
There’s a reason a college degree, experience at a job, and valid certifications are still so highly valued today: the process in attaining these things through struggle forms a person. Skillshare courses or years spent chronically online don’t lead to wisdom. Technology tends toward the bitey, the quick, and the contextless. Without our feet firmly planted on the solid ground of deep research, earned experience, and a life of connection, we will fall prey to staying atop the waves when the true treasure is on the ocean floor.
the innovation bargain of technology
Publicly,
every technology unlocks a new class of responsibilities and starts a race that will end in tragedy if uncoordinated. We only learned about the right to control personal data when social media companies began controlling them for us. A new set of liabilities arose with terms, conditions, and legalities aflame. Big Tech fought to control their perch in user’s lives and conscientious objectors spoke up against targeting and manipulation. This fight is still underway… but it doesn’t look good for you and I.
The race around social media is remarkable and at the forefront of the battle for human attention and dignity, but everyday, innovations uncover signs of new sets of harm. The proliferation of AI chatbots in all spheres show how accelerated distribution through API’s and social media can skyrocket a tech to ubiquity. Short-form video content reignites the race to feed upon user attention and causes every platform to shift their model in favor of virality, scattered-attention, and the obliteration of context. Whether tragedy or transformation comes of these tools depends on our ability to understand them and coordinate a prudent response…
Personally,
devices make a proposition to us. A trade of talents, an exchange of encumbrances. “Now, you’ll be able to do this, but not that. You’ll no longer have to do this, but you’ll start having to do that.”
This bargain is predicated upon the innate human god complex, the inbuilt desire to perform magic with our minds. There is an age-old ache within all generations of inventors that reaches for the impossible. In an attempt to transcend our heavy hands and broken bodies, we shape the resources of our world to bend around this impulse. But magic comes with a cost. Like the proverbial touch of gold, our innovations can come with a heavy, personal toll.
When Google was invented, we gained the ability to summon any bit of information with a query. Simultaneously, we began to lose the ability to remember and understand the information we so desperately sought. We no longer had to wait to know an answer until we could return to our books and libraries, but we now have to know that answer at once, regardless of context, company, or consequence.
If we examine the technologies we have adopted, what bargains do we find we have made? Have we traded away parts of our humanity, time, or attention? Do we feel the ache of buyer’s remorse about integrating devices that seem to numb the ache increasingly less over time? Would we go back and make a different trade if we knew what it would cost?
a rule of life
Early followers of the itinerant Jewish rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, took on the lifestyle and practices of their teacher through what became known as a Rule of Life. A set of formative practices relating to their days, careers, and relationships that sought to unify body, mind, and heart under the instruction of his (and choice other’s) ideals.
This may seem archaic and stifling to you, but here’s the truth:
You already have a Rule of Life.
Whether you are aware of it or not, you live by a unique set of rhythms. Your time is always divided into buckets (hap-hazardously or intentionally): work, relationships, meals, play. The ways you spend your time may ebb and flow from week to week, but, for the most part, your life follows a set of programmed rituals.
The questions you should be asking are:
…from where did I receive these rhythms and routines?
…are these habits in line with my values?
…can I change my ways?
Technology tries incredibly hard to avoid answers to the first and ensure the last two are ‘no.’ Over the course of just a few decades, without thinking, we have reoriented the structure of our lives to accommodate and encourage the needs of technology.
The home was once centered around a fireplace or hearth. Couches didn’t face a black screen and make room for chords and speakers connecting our senses to virtual entertainment. Our pockets weren’t overstuffed with a too-large device that begged our attention with sound and vibrations. Our desks and bookshelves housed time-tested wisdom, writing and reading tools, and debris from the life of intellectual explorers.
Our environment engineers the trajectory of our life and a technologically engineered environment has nefarious ends. Techno-optimists will laud the efficiency and connectedness of devices but where is the proof? Our society is closer to war and spiritual collapse with each year since social media and smartphone’s took the main-stage. Work hours have not decreased as was once predicted and a malaise remains over our general satisfaction with the life-hours we spend grinding away at tasks. Our great-grandparents would expect our happiness levels to be through the roof, but the mental health crisis tells a different story. Have we created an environment perfect for technology but harmful to humanity?
What can we do but reclaim our spaces, reframe our time, and rewrite our habits? Can we pen a new way of life to match our striving for those values that matter most to us? Will we be formed under the instruction and rule of technological or higher powers in the end?
love letter to books
Google built an LLM-powered summarization feature for the web that scrapes a page for reader bullet points. This move prompts my thinking about other design choices of the internet that compose its character.
How often do we use a look-up function to skip past content and find our treasured answer? What do we miss with the flick of the wrist’s motion to a conclusion unearned? Where is our attention pulled by a side-loaded advertisement in the midst of deeper understanding? The internet’s limitless and distracted perversion of knowledge into what we call “information” stands in direct contrast to its profound and liberating predecessor that bears few similarities.
Books require patient, intentional, intelligent attention to glean the same “information” but are about so much more. Reading is a journey for two. Author and audience partake in a transformative labor to do more than simply digest words. Words from books stay with us long after we’ve read them. Whether consciously or not, we live our lives from the effort we expended in taking the time to understand a vital truth, go on an epic quest, or become humbled by another human’s experiences.
From page to page, we are aware of the great struggle in its making. When we hold its outer bindings, we sense the wisdom of an entire lifetime, career, or era packed between our fingers. As we begin the first page, we realize that this act of beginning anew could change our lives in lasting ways.
A book has never been merely a book as the internet is not simply the internet. They are both collections of human knowledge that are designed to create environments for us to do two things: thrive or detach.
premature assisted living
As children, we believe the world revolves around us. Ideally and historically, the growing up process is a shift from self-centeredness to selflessness. To find ways to give our life away. To seek practices to increase our impact in the world. To create space for others to grow beyond where we fall. The aging flight path winds up pulling our orbit back down to the realization of reliance. Incapability becomes our MO. Dependency our posture.
This process of reliance to independence back to dependence is natural and good. In its proper place, the idea and practice of assisted living for the aged is an essential maturation process for those learning how to step away from the throne they built for themselves in life. The process of “giving our deaths away” as we once did for our lives is the flowering of the fine wine in the human experience. Its predecessor and constituents (“middle life” and caretakers) are, in their proper time, both the reward and lesson of living.
Maturity is found by staying in middle life and not slipping into a premature assisted living. Dealing with uncertainty, navigating nuance, controlling our desires, and healthily channeling our emotions are the challenges we encounter. Our response is our cartography.
Too many “adults” today could plot themselves far to close to the extreme ends of human journey. The infantilization of the West has been correlated to a number of recent shifts. The ingredients of a premature assisted living are general incontinence which brings about the need for a personal caretaker and sees the slow decline of mental and physical capabilities.
I would propose the pervasive adoption of digital technology conjured up these ingredients in us all. So often touted as a “personal assistant,” our devices have shaped the way we interact with work, relationships, and the natural world. We are aided by a host of predictive technologies that say, “you don’t have to know, I’ll know for you. I’ll recommend, curate, and understand, so that you don’t have to.” These decide what we watch, hear, and see. They tell us who to message, date, and follow.
Our reliance upon them has brought about a mental and spiritual dissoluteness. The moral bankruptcy of our public figures and celebrities relates a juvenile picture of modern character training. The physical well-being of Americans has never been so poor. Could it be possible that our society has entered a premature decline with a sedative called “the smartphone?”
Without conflict and the challenges of encountering the real world, maturing is impossible. Video games and 24/7 entertainment on social media siloes off neighbor from neighbor and destroys our communities. Erasing the unknown, we are left to steward the power of gods without the practiced wisdom and prudence of gods.
This deficit will continue so long as the education we receive and distribute fails to provide cultivation for the virtues and promotion of the arduous good. If we cannot course correct the journey of a core subset of our rising leaders, our state will be in peril and our hearts will be forcibly swayed into a technological submission inevitable for those who give up their faculties in favor of convenience, comfort, and conformity.
go light | affordances |
In design thinking, affordances are those functions which a tool immediately presents as an option to users. For a hammer or screwdriver, the grips are self-evident while the business ends afford at least a guess at what the device could be used for. A blunt, metal end urges our minds to smash (so much so that “hammer” eventually became the operational verb of this act in symbiosis with early stone-headed tools). A pointy, grooved end leads us to look for a place to insert its pattern while the octagonal grip insinuates a turning motion with the holding wrist.
Affordance are everywhere. Door handles that say “push” or imply “pull.” Indentations on keys that are satisfyingly discovered to be buttons when clicked. These work in tandem with the human body to allow us to function without thought.
The digital world uses transposed design language to communicate its affordances. Swiping pages like a book, receiving haptic feedback from clicking icons, double-tapping things we like (which feels neatly gamified in its insidious simplicity). For fifteen years, our minds have slowly adjusted themselves to the point of rewriting our ability to interact with those analog tools like the hammer. The disappearance of shop class and the rise of the “knowledge worker” betoken a clear shift in priorities.
The issue arises when we try to ask, what does a smartphone afford? Said with zero hyperbole: everything.
A phone is meant to be a communication device. We downsized landline and rotary phones over decades to allow portability for our more urgent conversations. But these became something else. Maybe we took all our smart and put it into the phone, leaving you and I with…
Upon your very first start-up, smartphones present more than a few things. Messages, calls, maps, forecasts, internet, cameras, movies, and games. Jump into the app store and welcome to infinity. Decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, option inundation- these become our water, pings, notification symbols, and vibrations become our air within which we (dry) drown.
Were we ever meant to have this many affordances at the swipe of a finger? Would we expect affordances like these to prompt anything but the chaos, polarization, toxicity, inattention, and unrest we have today? Are we intent on lagging behind the intelligence of our devices in this incessant off-loading process?
Should we instill our phones with wisdom as we uninstall our intelligence, or should we create more tools whose affordances respect our anthropology and restrain our god complex?
//go light
revolution and redemption
Scholars believe the first seven centuries of the second millennia to be a period of slow fermentation in which materials, essential knowledge, and technical philosophies began to coalesce around certain hubs of industry. What came next transformed human history forever. Industrialists of this era launched a revolution that reached every part of society and learning. Sigfried Giedion, a historian and architecture critic from the twentieth century, said this of that period:
“Invention was a part of the normal course of life. Everyone invented. Every entrepreneur dreamed of more rapid and economical means of fabrication. The work was done unconsciously and autonomously. Nowhere else and never before was the number of inventions per capita as great as in America in the 60’s of that century.“