The people selling you AI and tech love telling us what we can do with our time when technology takes over. You could be on a beach somewhere, they say, failing to imagine anything else than sitting on a beach because they have no idea what normal people enjoy.
You won’t have to drive because your car does that for you, forgoing to learn important skills we learn from driving like coordination or situational awareness. You could instead enjoy the scenery, or you know, stare at your phone a bit more. I wonder who benefits from that.
Work is another pesky activity they will rid us of, as if we work only because we have to, and of course art. Why don’t you sit on a beach somewhere instead and consume some content?
Well, I’m not sitting on a beach because Sam fucking Altman or Elon Musk to me I could. As if those two know anything about what makes life enjoyable. If I`m going to sit on a beach, it will because I worked hard and I deserve a break.
Something nice, like sitting on a beach, is only nice because of two reasons. The first one being that you know what it is like doing something not nice. Sitting on a beach with a cool beer and a good friend after a hard days work is nice. Sitting on a beach because you have nothing else to do is mostly just boring.
I recently read a book for my son in the legendary Swedish series about Alfons Åberg (Alfie Atkins in English), in where Alfons and his dad is incredibly bored because Christmas is over and they fantasize about every day being either Christmas or birthdays, to which Alfons grandma laughs and teaches them a lesson that you can only have fun if you know what it is like being bored. They then start appreciate being bored because they know what comes after will be more fun.
The second reason sitting on a beach is enjoyable is because you have limited time on this earth to enjoy things like sitting on a beach. This is of course another “issue” that the tech bros will have you believe will be solved soon. You won’t have to do any of that hard work and you will live forever, or at least for a long time.
Imagine being on a beach without ever knowing whats its like not being on a beach, or somewhere nice, and knowing that you will be doing it forever. That sound like a horror movie.
Add on top that you will be surrounded by people who have never done anything hard, never done anything to develop any sort of personality and have nothing interesting to say because they spent their lives sitting on a beach.
All this talk bout not working and living longer is of course smoke and mirrors, they don’t want you to live at all, and they certainly don’t really want you to spend any time at a beach, unless of course you to so while staring into your phone, or worse smart glasses, so you can feed the machine with your data and endlessly consume.