Submitted by Mother_Welder_5272 t3_10x644e in Futurology
I consider myself a futurist and technologist. I have an engineering job and enjoy coding side projects. I'm interested in speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker talking about how the world is getting better.
What strikes me is that they are often using metrics such as "amount of people in the workforce" or "innovations per year" or "cost of energy per kJ" or "vaccinations distributed" and things like that. I have to agree that if you use that metric, there is clear improvement, and it paints an optimistic picture of the future.
However, for me, I can't help but notice that some aspects of our quality of life have been going downhill. I'm talking about in mainstream US culture. Work hours extending, the need for second and third jobs to make rent, and the automated convenience economy which means you can get everything delivered, or go be the deliveree if you need cash. All this leads to a society in which we all simply have less time to hang out with each other and relax. Or just do hobbies that don't have to generate income. There's stories about families who used to spend all Sunday together, which seems unthinkable in a world where you need to be checking your emails to be ready for work on Monday, or working on your LinkedIn or networking.
A lot of people say that their mental health is going down. There are tons of thought pieces and articles that directly tie loneliness to depression and poor mental health and higher mortality rates. The most famous is the book Bowling Alone, or the studies on the Roseto Effect. Loneliness is thought to be a silent epidemic that is just getting larger. To my reasoning, older generations had more natural immunity to loneliness just because how neighborhoods and life were structured. This seems to be completely gone by now and I see no trend of it returning.
So in the large scale, when people talk about futurism and the path forward of humanity, why do the articles and TED talk speakers neglect this point? To me, if you use "Impromptu time together with others" as a metric, we have been floundering and the future looks incredibly bleak. Should this be a metric spoken about in futurist circles and articles?
To me, VR headsets and AI and ML don't mean anything if I have an aching hole in my heart because I haven't had a belly laugh with friends in over 5 years. Or if I haven't been able to strum a guitar all night because I'm answering emails until midnight. Am I alone or should this be a much larger topic?