I’ve often contemplated what my life could be like if I minimized my use of technology. In an age where digital connections span the globe in milliseconds, I find myself wondering: could a life less tethered to technology not only be possible but preferable? I think I could find a way to sustain myself in a much simpler life but I don’t think it is something I’d be interested in; at least not at this moment. The allure of progress and expanding my understanding of the world outweighs my desires to live a simplified existence.

I constantly think about is how far humanity has come and wonder about how far we can go. Although admittedly my view on this is shifting after reading Meditations; written nearly 2,000 years ago and still relevant. Our ancestors would have thought that the ability to make phone calls was black magic. Could you imagine what they would think of our ability to collaborate globally in nearly real time? Today, we’re more connected than we’ve ever been. Now, with the recent advancements of Artificial Intelligence the sum total of human knowledge is more accessible than ever. My goal in reminding myself of this is to consider what the possibilities of our future are. It’s easy to be pessimistic about the current state of the world when you are bombarded with headlines that are meant to draw the reader in. To be optimistic you need to push through the day to day suffering that is kept front and center and zoom out. Consider the following advancements over the last 100 years:

• Antibiotics were invented 95 years ago.
• The first flight to space was 67 years ago.
• The mobile phone was invented 50 years ago.
• The internet was invented 41 years ago.
• Bitcoin was invented 14 years ago.
• ChatGPT was invented this year.

This desire or interest in progress drives a lot of my work both professionally and personally. The thought of turning away from technology and progress would mean placing artificial limits on what I’m able to experience and the data that I use to inform my opinions of humanities existence.

The reality is that we all face the limitation of a finite amount of time. This is one of the things that excites me the most about technology. What if we were able to solve for the problem of time? What if we could remove our biological limitations? What experiences would be made available to us? The beauty in our existence is our consciousness and if we can manufacture that consciousness in a digital form I don’t think it makes it any less beautiful or valid. I’ll explore this idea a bit more next week in my review of Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark.

Ultimately, it’s this desire to experience that motivates me day in and day out. It’s what is motivating me most recently to get out in the world and experiment.