"'Just in time’ has become a feature of our times, whether you’re optimising inventory in a supply chain or checking in at the airport before the desk shuts." A plethora of digital and physical preoccupations constantly vie for our attention, leaving us with an attention and time deficit. Our brains are bursting at the seams with this attention overload, which means we barely have enough time between stimulus and response, leave alone the luxury of time to digest the context before we allow ourselves to react, rather than respond. It’s a particularly opportune discussion, we are in the beginning of Purshottam maas, an ancient time adjustment that our ancients incorporated to account for the difference between the Solar and Lunar new years, with an extra month every 2.5-3 years.
Even the most efficient machines can’t run at 100%, and since we are only human, we often need to remind ourselves that we do need downtime every now and then, when we can allow our consciousness to expand. Human awareness is wonderfully transformative, and just like our digestive juices, it’s really important that we allow it to operate on the stimuli we are constantly ingesting, if we are expecting a radically new outcome. Whether it’s the inspiration we seek to write poetry or create a vaccine for the next pandemic, what we need more than anything is the space for our minds to step out of the problem mindset, analyse the problem and allow the response to brew.
Our bodies and minds run at different speeds, our minds of course racing all around the world several times a minute, however our bodies are still limited in physical space. As technology advances, and AI becomes the new Ferraris for our mind, we are not so seduced by this tectonic shift, that we completely forget about our bodies, and almost make the prophecy of ‘The Matrix’ come true. A world, where the only experiences our minds can appreciate are digital, and it becomes disconnected with the natural world. One may hope that as we are able to offload some of the lower order work to AI, we may have more free time on hand to explore existential topics like the nature of reality, preserving this beautiful planet and lasting world peace.
At every fork that technology brings us to, we have a choice to make. Choosing convenience that comes at a cost, or continuing to stay in touch with our humanity. This latest frontier of technology brings us a promise, one that will change the very nature of life. At a time like this, it's super important to find something to ground ourselves in and cultivate that flex, which allows our minds to not just adapt to this change, but also imagine what the new reality will look like.
