Great ideas!! Especially the concept of mutual aid communities, I bet they could be implemented right now. If only we could get a bunch of engineers to build a worldwide, decentralized, nonprofit platform to organize them...
GenZ here. 95% of my life so far has been spent alone lol. Prices for everything are crazy, a 1-BR apt cost 2-3K a month, and jobs barely pay enough to cover that while taking up half my waking hours. I've totally burned out
I'm 22, going through something similar. Been a tech nerd since I was a kid. I don't mind programming, but I can't do it outside my day job anymore. I basically spend all my free time writing, sketching, and going outside. Connecting with life in this way strengthens my mental battery for the challenge of coding.
I support your optimism and believe we can move in that direction. However I still believe you severely underestimate the scale of misery, solitude, and unmet desires amongst humanity. Also, you mention it won't be possible to make everyone perfectly content, implying some will be more content than others. How is that fair? Why must some have fewer friends, lovers, positive experiences, adventures, achievements etc? This is a fundamental psychological inequality in the world that could only be balanced by AI.
I agree with the sentiment, but tbh a lot of people suffer alone on this planet and designing societal structures to serve absolutely everyone's emotional needs would be impossible. An AI would be perfect for all the misfits, elderly, loners, disabled, "ugly," outcasts, etc, right?
Thanks for this. Your last paragraph was a good wake-up call. I was definitely exaggerating, and I fear exactly the scenario you laid out for my future. Aside from a minor Twitter obsession, I'm learning to use my phone far more like a tool than a companion. I've realized that even if content on the Internet is far better than whatever I make in real life, I'll only ever be satisfied by what I achieve.
That's a great way of living! I like how you make yourself very available to the ones you love. Honestly you've inspired me to reprioritize who I spend my social energy on over the phone.
Sorry to upset you, I was being overdramatic. My goal was to convey how powerless I feel when scrolling through infinite amounts of creative, funny, or intelligent content that I can't recreate at all in reality. However, I am slowly learning how to use the Internet as healthy inspiration rather than as a way to escape my own insecurities and shortcomings.
You are right, I was being sarcastic there. It comes from a place of hurt because for me the Internet was the only substitute I had for many of the formative, stimulating relationships and experiences in real life that I've badly wanted to find in my youth.
I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.