“It’s a privilege that technology has made our lives more convenient, but it has also pushed us to a dilemma of choice. It’s expedient”
Being given with more choices was considered to be a sign of prosperity. Freedom meant the freedom to opt. But what, when we become victims of our own success? These days, there are zillions of signals competing for our attention. They say if you don’t have “THIZZ” today, you’re not attentive.
We’re all, suffering from this disease of options, this bandwidth anxiety, this handicapped attention span! We go to the supermarket and there is just too much to choose from. There are too many options. We lack the RAM to process all these probabilities.
We experience instead, the angst of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), the angst that no matter what we choose, we are missing out on something else. The over-availability of choices, the richness of choice of freedom has become tyrannical. It has made us numb to choose one thing over other, even if you do it has consumed much of your time. So, what then is in the future? What kind of new software platforms and new interfaces between self and the world will we see?
Choices are everywhere, whether it’s about choosing messaging apps or choosing between the food on the table for today’s supper. You are put up with this constant stream of decisions each day, every minute.
“The best technology reduces problems lets you achieve something and then gets out of the way.” It’s this proposal by tech researchers that we’re going to offload decisions to algorithms that are going to know us better than we know. So that, when we walk upon the world, options will be afforded to us and provided to us only when it actually makes sense. We will never be stuffed by too much. Things will just open up a park of forking roads. Everything will be attention-prone, provided to us at a dosage that we can handle. It’ll be like being in the flow where you’re not really missing anything and the right thing is given up to your brain, when useful and needed.
But it’ll never be okay around a rushed city, where people are overwhelmed by FOMO and dead from inside because of the anxiety. So, I actually think that this is going to be kind of awesome. I mean, some people are afraid that it’s going to create nonsensical scenarios and we’re all going to be paralysed into stupors. But I don’t think so.
I think we’re all going to be provided with realities that would extend our thinking to spaces, places and virtualities we cannot even imagine. I think, the graphics, games, videos and all visual predicates are going to get better.
We’re going to live inside of our thought-worlds and things will be provided up to us as needed when needed. And it’ll be great. We’re all going to be on this amazing journey and it’s going to be amazing. I think it will be an adventurous way to exist, just like those Assassin’s Creed Games. We won’t be hung down by overused RAM or stupid choices. No dilemmatic things to opt from.
And, you know. This fascinates me!
