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Priya K's avatar
3hEdited

Gentrification of the soul, great phrase.

Good list and there’s even plenty of stuff at work that I want to still go slowly, more humanly. Like, please don’t use AI to make us see more patients, would be nice to use it to give us more meaningful time with the patients we see.

Sometimes I worry when I don’t automatically use ChatGPT to write a letter of rec or presentation proposal I’m falling behind because apparently everyone else does but damn it, this came from my brain and that means something

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Philip Teale's avatar

Yes yes! I'm glad you pointed out the link between accelerationism and the acceleration of everyday life. I took a similar view (albeit not as AI-focused) here, in this piece: https://mutantfutures.substack.com/p/stuck-on-fast-forward Life is accelerating at the moment not just cause of AI but due to a range of factors.

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Near Future Laboratory's avatar

It was over 18(!) years ago, but I still get comments and remarks about this speculative prototype I built called Slow Messenger (https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/projects/en/slow-messenger-2007/) that was a poke at "instant messenger" services, back when they had to make the point that it was "instant"..now that's table stakes for any communications channels unless, that is, we decide we want something different!

Also, cf: the SlowAI project (https://aixdesign.co/posts/slow-ai)

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Sam Illingworth's avatar

Awesome post team and thanks so much for the shout out. Means a lot. 🙏

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Lotte Holterman's avatar

Thank you for putting this into words! I’ll be sharing this a lot with the people around me.

The past few years, I have been intentionally slowing down and reflecting on what I really want to use technology for. What I like about having a phone and apps like WhatsApp/Signal and Instagram, is that I can easily reach a lot of people who have similar values and hobbies, so they can get together and meet each other – in real life. I am part of a knitting club and a drawing club, and I organise ‘making days’ to simply carve out time to make stuff with your hands and be around people. Technology makes it really easy to set dates and invite everyone, but in my opinion, it should not and cannot replace real-life connections. (Let alone making stuff with your hands – oh, the satisfaction of finishing something that took a lot of time and effort!)

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Ann's avatar

Whether we like it or not, the pace of change is accelerating. How we respond to change - and its velocity - is in our control. Being deliberate and intentional about how we navigate and adapt to change is the difference between being depleted and thriving.

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@colleenkenny's avatar

There is more to life than increasing its speed. - Gandhi

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