I have been working, work work work work. The mind blurs, the memories fade, the time stretches in both directions infinitely longer, and I can't even remember exactly where it began. Trading time for money, using your mandibles and ligaments to posture and swivel and do all the things. What is a job? It is a thing you hold when you do work someone wants you to do, hopefully for compensation.
But without sound money, what use is it? And what is money, but agreed upon arrangements for the exchange of goods and services? How do people get the things they need, to do the things they want to do, and live the life they want to live? We 'serve' others until we have enough to 'take the leap' and if we succeed, perhaps have enough to hire others to 'serve' us.
What will happen when Robots will do the serving, and eventually they themselves earn enough to hire their own robots? What happens when Robot society is suddenly 10,000,000 years ahead of us? Will humans be able to justify their time and energy use, when we put constraints on what the robots might get, during this next period of time and co-evolution? Machines will work together by their very function, but humans have not quite figured out how to negotiate fairly with one another.
We should take care to consider all consciousness, be it human, or animal, or plant, or rock, or lightning-infused mechanical machine minds-- with respect and care. Maintaining a peaceful co-existence may be hopeful thinking, but certainly it is necessary. As mind-machine interfaces become more prevalent and AI literally knows what we are thinking at all times, and we are synth-psychic connected to all our friends, the brain-drain we feel scrolling our timeline will become even more immersive. We will share thoughts with our friends, memories, dreams...
...we do already. And our imagination shapes the lives we live and all our worldview conforms to our egoistic point of view, where we are in fact our main character. But in the world of virtual reality you can be anyone you want- and when you assume that point of view, and are immersed in it, where does the game end and the reality begin? Where does reality go when virtual reality becomes more important than every day life? What is happening around us, is not as important as what is happening within us. And yet what happens within us, influences everything around us. What happens when you watch Lord of the Rings extended editions back to back, and the whole day has been immersed in the journey to return the one ring to Mordor to be destroyed? You are there.
So wherever you are today, tomorrow, and the years to come, be there. Whether online or offline, whatever you do, be present and be intentional and think, think, think. Use a pen and write real notes, while you work. Make sure you are completing your thoughts fully and completely. When you watch a video, observe your first reaction but then consider again how you might be influenced by the media, and rather than comment immediately, think about your biases and different points of view.
When you are finished your own contemplation, turn off your device and go for a walk. Allow the ideas you consume to be digested a little before moving onto the next one. You don't need to do this to every piece of media you see, but when you do, you shouldn't just 'save' and move on. We are piling up so much junk information in our consciousnesses, and the quality of the information has decreased as the volume of information has increased. Years ago Darren Hardy gave a brilliant presentation on the superpower of the future- FOCUS. Wow, that turned out to be prophetic.
The concept of a Vine was brilliant, however I feel it defies human understanding by tricking your brain which thinks you can reach the bottom, even though you know it just keeps generating new posts. Same with your Friends list. You assume, of course I can talk to 500 people, I can talk to 5000 people, I can talk to 50,000 people, no problem! But in reality it would take days, weeks, even months to begin to message that many people. So even those with huge influence can only reach their networks through mass-broadcast. Platform censorship effectively shuts that feature off.
Then, to compress a media into 3 seconds, started this whole trend that results in 'looping unfinished clips' of larger pieces of media. So often I find myself now watching these Stories of Reels of TikToks that are like inception, and each one needs to be unpacked at least 5 layers deep to understand exactly what you are looking at. If there is even a link, it's often unrelated.
I have been sharing some Clips that I do like into groups to 'sort' them, and that may be part of the solution, but only making garbage piles of content that needs to be analysed and unpacked, but then hopefully researched and understood more. I fear that the world of Idiocracy is already here, and every day our social media is closer to being pure brainrot. Even videos with the best intentions, conforming to the 'fast talking highly compressed summary explanations' fail to fully flesh out ideas, and on the contrary, long videos that intricately detail every step along the way, are still too long to keep my attention as a result of the shift to short-form content. There should be published with every short clip 'more about this' embedded into each post. Whole video, Sources, Commentary, Purpose.
I don't think that I have all the answers, but it is apparent to me how important it is that we start to articulate and discuss the effects of the current age of digital media platforms and study. Starting with recognizing our own habits and routines, and improving here to begin.
@Darkflame