Why should we be optimised?
I read an article some weeks ago about the prevailing age: we're driven to optimise and make everything more efficient. We apply this philosophy not only to our software and business, but also to ourselves: extend life, optimise exercise routines, make use of our time more efficient. But, why? We're not software, are we? Marketing, profit, and recognition, perhaps, motivate the thinking and behaviour.
It's all about improving the self, just as we roll-out software updates. It's an age of hermetic purity and insular self-improvement rather than an age of messy hedonism and social exploration.
In a world where we're sold health supplements and red light machines on the basis of extending our lives (fear of death and filling the pockets of salespeople - the same old story) and where we tend to view everything through the lens of software and hardware (our brain is data that can be uploaded, according to some people who are sure to gain something from this), it’s no shock that at the intersection of these beliefs is a core of anxiety.
I had a thought in the shower this morning: the mistake that all civilisations make is the belief they are superior to previous civilisations; that crucial lessons on avoiding collapse have been learned and that new technologies will result in utopia. But every civilisation nurtures the seeds that will grow to be weeds and inevitably expand the cracks in the facade. It's Byron's Ozymandias over and over...
It seems to me that our age is dominated by the tech-mogul and the promise of technology - it will extend human life, defeat death, allow greater efficiency, drive optimisation, fix societal ills. But, it’s a single age. No more right or wrong than other ages. It’s an eye blink. Another garden of weeds.
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