What should we do with the time that new technologies save?

In this episode, we wonder about time. The time tech companies promise to save with almost every new product or feature release. We’ve been hearing these time-saving promises for so long that we should all be quite time-rich by now. Yet, the more tech we have in our lives, the more busy we seem to be. And we’re still far away from the 15-hour workweek that tech-enabled productivity gains were supposed to lead to. We seem to be spending all the time we save by doing more. 

We wonder whether lossless compression of time is even possible, and about what is lost when new technologies like generative AI allow us to do more, faster. We explore various paradoxes related to time, the relationship between time and energy, time and money, and what we value in modern societies. Is the time we save for ourselves actually time borrowed from the system, with somebody or something paying the price? We also reflect on the language of time, the ways architecture and design of physical spaces and social norms affect our thinking about time and how we choose to spend time.

It appears that new technologies do indeed save time per task basis, but not on the scale of our lifetimes because we tend to fill our time void with more work, more consumption, more comfort, more separation. Digital technologies widen our time intent-to-action gap as they overwhelm us with choice and pressure to spend the time we save on more content, more activities. Can we make time for joy, wonder, creativity, and deepening the relationship with ourselves, each other, and nature, so that we don’t end up with deathbed regrets about wasting the finite time each of us has in our lifetime? And what can we do differently as we adopt and build more time-saving technologies?

If you’d like to wonder and wander with us, join Tethix firekeepers Alja Isaković and Mathew Mytka in this meandering exploration inspired by the latest Pathfinders Newmoonsletter. In addition to the resources explored in the Newmoonsletter, we recommend exploring:

• LinkedIn post on generative AI  productivity exec expectations vs employee perception

• The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing by Bronnie Ware

• Apple apologizes for iPad ‘Crush’ ad that ‘missed the mark’

• Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich – and that threatens us all by George Monbiot

• Your Life in Weeks

• I Think the Loneliness Epidemic May Now Be a Pandemic. What an opportunity for Proactive Kindness and Social Connection!

• Whatever happened to the 15-hour workweek?

• For 95 Percent of Human History, People Worked 15 Hours a Week. Could We Do It Again?

• Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's

• Tech companies tried to help us spend less time on our phones. It didn’t work.

You can learn more about the Tethix pathfinding adventure at: https://tethix.co/pathfinders/