The Cost of Convenience

Today I wanted to post something different, about the attention economy, and cognitive function. Keep reading at your own discretion. 

Asimov’s favorite short story is a story about an AI called Multivac, which he wrote in 1956. It’s titled ‘The Last Question’

He explores the question humanity asked Multivac (and its evolutions over time): Can entropy be reversed, and can the universe’s end be avoided? The AI never generated an answer, even after eons. The entropy is the irreversible process that makes the universe’s eventual extinction inevitable.

Multivac had been able to answer every question, except this one. Humanity

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Great post. Have found myself leveraging AI daily and to be honest, have even had it summarized longer posts or write-ups that I would usually spend the time to go through. It's so early but can already see how I'd grow dependent on it.

Been reading a really interesting report, but never got around to finishing writing notes on it.... Today I finally reached it, but was too lazy to write notes for the last section, so I asked GPT to do it. Good thing GPT did not work and I decided to write the notes myself.

And then I came across this post... It hit me hard.

I understand the feeling. It's a direct consequence of the times we're living in. I used to be an eager reader of books; nowadays, I find it hard to concentrate and finish 10 pages without having to check my phone.

When I started my journey in crypto, I used to take notes in my paper notebook. I really enjoyed it, as it gave me time to process the information I was learning and internalize it. At some point, I stopped doing that and started taking notes on Google Docs or Notion

I'm starting to sound like my old man, but every now and then I feel that things were better in the past, I don't like that we don't own anything no more:

  • No music, we just pay a suscription to listen it in Spotify or youtube+. Same with movies and tv shows.

  • No books, all stored on e-readers. That's why I never bought a kindle, I like to collect and own things, and still love the experience of going to a library and getting lost choosing what to read next.

  • No photos, all our memories are kept in the cloud and we don't give the value they used to have, as we have our phone and can take as many photos as we want.

  • We don't even own our own notes jfc, as they’re all in the cloud too. We interact daily with more people online than in the real world, and that's just sad.

Maybe physical books and taking notes on paper are the last bastions of the analog era.

Do the exercise to check your screen time if you didn't, I felt something was wrong.

Not saying we should go full caveman mode, but I realized this, and I decided to take concrete action to keep an equilibrium. I deleted instagram, put my phone in airplane mode while I'm at home, among other things. I just don't like to live the moment through screens, I feel like I need a digital detox.

Apologies for the (not so) long post as it's not 100% related to crypto, but I just felt that every once in a while, it's good to take a step back, reflect on where we are, how we feel, and take concrete actions on things we're not entirely happy about.

Based post