I went to the sauna yesterday after a climbing session and overheard a conversation about how driverless cars in the future will mean more time down the pub or drinking more at home in a virtual pub.
I started thinking about what this trend of automation in our lives means and where it’s heading…
The age of automation
The age of automation has started about 200 years ago and has dramatically changed how we spend our time on basic life functions.
The following activities have been automated so much that they no longer take up most of our time, leaving little spare for relaxing, pondering, exploring, learning and just experiencing:
- Washing ourselves – used to involve going to get fresh water, warming it up, disposing of it. The whole thing could take hours and was done a few times a week at most. With mains water, gas and electric heating and sewage we can get washed in minutes now.
- Washing clothes – you’d have to carry the (much bulkier and heavier than now) clothes to the river, in winter too, get into the water fully clothed and get it done by hand. Sometimes drowning in the process. That washing machine looking a bit more revolutionary now?
- Preparing food – ready meals, microwaves, super markets with washed and ready to cook ingredients are all mod cons. You’d have to go to market, often walking for miles or riding a horse, get fresh water from far and prepare food in simple kitchens before. And before that – spend hours and days hunting, foraging or planting seeds and looking after crops.
- Transport – walking, horseback or horse cart is all we had for thousands of years. With the advent of trains, buses and personal cars – let alone airplanes, we can now get about 10x and 1000x times faster than just 200 years ago.
- Shopping (for anything) – shops were far away and with limited stock, would take hours if not several days to get to and often did not have what we needed. Popping down to the town centre 5 minutes walk away or shopping online is literally 10,000 times faster than before.
- Communication – all you had for a long time were post, which would take days or weeks – if not longer – and face to face, for which you’d have to travel. Travel for days if not longer. Phone, email, video calling, instant messaging has cut huge chunks out of our time and made information relaying instant.
What now?
All this dramatic and enormous changes mean we now have a LOT more spare time. Spare time to do ANYTHING.
It does not have to be time spent down the pub drinking ourselves into oblivion or watching TV, eating take out till we’re so fat we can only move around on floating mobility scooters (like in WALL-E).
All this spare time means we can spend less time doing basic survival stuff and spend more time learning, creating, inventing, pondering, exploring and doing other things, we never had time for before – even if we wanted to.
Well, a select few people did have the time to explore, learn and not just survive – emperors, kings, tzars, dukes, lords and the privileged elite.
Now we all get the privilege of spare time!
We can spend the time to:
Learn:
- Read books and publications on the internet – the information that is now available to us is unprecedented!
- Learn new skills like programming, new languages, painting, building, gardening, knitting – you name it!
- Train new sports like running, swimming, rock climbing
- Go to new places – from near by towns to new continents and countries – experiencing new worlds, cultures and people
Create:
- Play instruments, compose music – again, all that we need for this is on the internet and around us
- Spend more time with children, teaching them from an earlier age, helping them grow up better prepared for the world
- Paint, sculpt – express ourselves in art
- Write blogs, books, training manuals
- Invent, discover and make new devices and processes
The possibilities are truly endless, no matter how corny or cheesy that sounds!
Let’s use it as the privilege that it is, not take it for granted.
Mind Iterations 