It’s difficult to imagine how different our world is today than it was 100 years ago, let alone 250 or 500. Most Americans lived off agriculture (64 percent of the population). During this period, most people experienced minimal comfort.
What, no chilled, carbonated drink to refresh me on a hot day?
Life mostly existed at the bottom two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: physiological and safety. Then, people squeezed in love and belonging from their families and esteem from their communities with whatever leftover time and energy remained.
It’s a world I don’t think anyone would choose to go back to. Compounding improvements in technology, intelligence, and education allows society to more easily fulfill the bottom levels of the safety and physiological needs.
Compounding isn’t just for money. Technology compounds. Human intelligence compounds. Ideas compound.
This creates the flywheel of civilization. We build, iterate, and remix ideas together in a giant melting pot. One idea builds off another, which comes from another idea discovered a hundred years ago by someone else.
And while progress does not move upwards in one consistent, smooth line in the shortest of time-frames (decades when looking at human civilization), we’ve experienced unfettered growth in almost all relevant metrics of human success, and we continue to do so even in areas where the popular narrative is “We’re not doing enough,” such as CO2 emissions…
(Although, IMO basing our entire environmental strategy around reducing CO2 emissions is an oversimplification that’s creating fragilities… another idea for a different newsletter topic)
The rapid change over the last 100 years was likely more dramatic than world civilization experienced from the time of Jesus Christ all the way up to the industrial revolution, about 1,700 years.
Yet, I believe the next 50 years have the potential for even more societal, cultural, and technological change than the last. AI and exponential technologies (automation, space flight, virtual reality, biotech, and more) redefine what it means to be human, how we define consciousness, what work means, and how we communicate.
It’s almost too strange to even write about. It feels fantastical, scary, and unsettling. But one thing is for sure, you, dear reader, cannot let the rapid changes coming (and already present) sweep you up and take control of your life.
Because if you don’t take control of your relationship to these rapid changes, technology will. You already see it today.
Screen time, phone addictions, the influencer economy… What ever happened to the utopia we were promised technology would lead us to?
We got sucked in and lost sight of what actually matters (another topic for another day). What’s needed right now is awareness of the forces affecting us so we don’t get sucked into another technology black hole.
One of those relationships that’s already present and affecting us is the rapid increase in the amount of information and data society creates and consumes.
The average human today processes 74 GB of data daily, equivalent to 9 HD movies worth of data. Sounds like a lot. But, I was more shocked to learn that the average highly educated person 500 years ago processed just 74GB of data in an entire LIFETIME.
And, that number, 74 GB, is increasing by 5% each year. At that rate, in 14 years we’ll be processing 148 GB of data daily. However, it feels like a good bet that number will begin to increase exponentially.
Our biological hardware and software (your brain, senses and nervous system) evolved and adapted over millions of years of relatively consistent inputs. The brains we have today are the same that our distant ancestors had over a hundred thousand years ago. This is a time where the main data inputs were observing social cues, weather patterns, and plant and animal life.
I don’t have an estimate of the amount of data that equals, however, I assume there are two main differences. First, once the bulk of that information was learned it remained rather static and unchanging for that person's lifetime (what animals and plants are located where, which you can eat, which you can use as medicine, etc). Second, the pace at which life introduces brand-new information is much, much faster today.
Today, you and I experience a barrage of data that’s far more numerous, more varied, and faster than at any other time in human civilization.
While humans have an incredible ability to adapt, it doesn’t change that most of us cultivate a mostly passive awareness of our lives. We tend to accept our circumstances because they are… our circumstances.
What’s the effect of consuming and processing 74GB of information daily on my happiness, joy, creativity, connection, love, and expression?
My answer is, I mostly don’t know, but I can’t imagine that left unchecked it’s going to have a positive or even neutral effect on me. So, if I don’t want to walk blindly into the black hole I need to create a framework for my relationship with the tidal wave of data coming at me.
I have control over the information I choose to let my eyes, ears, nose, fingers, skin, and body pass through to my brain and consciousness.
And, I believe more than ever that we all need a defined relationship with how we consume information. Because if you don’t create one now, life will create one for you without your consent.
I call this my personal content filter. A regular and normal part of being a human being means we build an identity of who we are based on our experiences, social relationships, and information we consume.
I am Jared. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. I have a wife, two dogs, and a cat.
And then, as I progress through life, I add and subtract pieces to my identity based on my experiences and social relationships.
So, as civilization increases the gigabyte bombardment, our default mode will constantly attempt to reshape our identities based on all the information our brain must process.
We take bits and pieces of what others say and we use them to reinforce our decisions.
We solidify our beliefs that we’re honorable and righteous people by identifying with beliefs that help us feel like we’re on the “right” side of a situation.
We compare ourselves to the image we have of others. We place ourselves above and below others in terms of importance or value.
Be careful with what you consume. And, at the least, develop your own rules and guidelines around what kind of content you consume and how you choose to relate to it.
The amount of content and data we’ll be exposed to is only heading in one direction, up. We have little to no control over that. We can, however, control the relationship we develop with the content we consume and what we allow into our identity.
Stay vigilant.
-Jared