Faster, Faster

While out running yesterday I saw a billboard advertisement for a countertop device that makes cocktails “in under 30 seconds.” Of course, we’ve been inventing useful technologies (i.e., a tool used in a systematic way) for millennia, as a strategy for making our lives sustainable in the face of all manner of threat. And, depending on how you look at it, we did quite well at it. It seems, however, following from the explosive growth of the industrial revolution some 200 years ago, the search for ease and time-saving has taken itself into absurdity, embodied here in the cocktail gizmo.

We really need to be asking ourselves what it is we’re trying to save all of this time for; towards what are we meant to be using all of this new found time? Surely we must have an abundance of it by now?! Is it in service of more production and economic growth—the holy grail of modern life? Presumably, the tacit belief, and the ‘sales pitch,’ was more leisure. Certainly, we’ve been hearing for decades how the proliferation of the computer would dramatically alter the working world. For example, in 1965, Joseph Froomkin of IBM predicted the 20-hour work week and the creation of a mass “leisure class.” Others suggested a necessary adjustment to “leisurely, nonfunctional lives.” Despite that sounding like a living hell, it was meant to suggest progress for humans, away from toil and suffering. Clearly that’s not come to pass, and, if anything, it’s moved us in the opposite direction of enabling more work, whenever, wherever. And what’s worse, now we’re at the point of saving time on leisure (making cocktails) to have more time for leisure. We’re economizing our leisure to such an extent that we no longer have any leisurely interests, aside from plopping down in front of the TV with a poorly made cocktail from a machine (but at least it was ready in under 30 seconds!).

When did we lose sight of the value (non-economic) of doing the thing in itself, for itself? Surely it’s in the making of the cocktail that is a significant part of the enjoyment—the process, the ritual, the practice; learning and improving at a thing, not solely for the productive output, but simply because there’s satisfaction and joy in the doing of it. When we extract the challenge and the satisfaction of the skillful action, in favor of ease and saving time, we’re making an unexamined choice to use that time elsewhere, and we really need to be asking ourselves if where it’s going is a worthwhile trade.

If we really play it out, what is it we’re rushing towards; what’s left for us when it’s all faster and easier? Is that when we’re all painting with watercolors and dancing in circles? Of course not, because AI will have painted the picture for us and we’ll be watching somebody else dance in a video on our phone. Or, maybe we are on the brink of a true revolution in how we spend our time, such that one day all of our ‘saved time’ will allow us to sit around talking about what the hell to do with our nonfunctional lives. I can’t wait.