Asia/Pacific region consumes, on average, 154 minutes per day of all media, compared to North America's 293.
I'm old enough to remember the general optimism we in technology had about the unlocking of human productive potential as automation and globalization freed us from the constraints of scarcity. Marshall Brain, Clay Shirky, and many others write extensively on this zeitgeist.
But that's not what ultimately happened. the zombification of our attention that began in the 1950s has accelerated in the last two decades. We're not volunteering our free time to space exploration collectives, life extension self-experimentation in biohacking hackerspaces, or even traditional enterprises like Habitat for Humanity.
We're clicking heart icons on posts bemoaning billionaires conducting private space exploration, getting angry at CRISPR researchers on Twitter, and passively consuming "marathons" of Hollywood renditions of dystopian future worlds.
This is to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have all that much more free time to begin with. Not because we're all working for SpaceX or in cancer research laboratories, but because the vast majority of the very people CAPABLE of doing so (IQ is in limited supply and not evenly distributed) are actively recruited to make iphone apps more addictive, make pornography engagement higher, and make front-running retail options order flow faster.
Apropos of Netflix (or in this specific example, Amazon Prime Video): There are likely 40 million hours passively poured into marathons of The Expanse in North America, by people with an average IQ in excess of 115 (just by virtue of the type of audience). What if half (approximately the NA/Asia split) of those hours were instead poured into activities that actually got us closer to the technologies depicted?
It seems you're just complaining that more people aren't doing work for free, in their free time away from work?
But even there, you're wrong about the activities/technologies you're complaining about. HfH, food banks, shelters, and other non-profits with limited capacity for volunteer work have wait lists several months long in my area. Only billionaires can explore space right now, so why would the rest of us be forming space exploration collections for something that is still a decade or two away? Tons of people self-experiment or participate in bio-hacking; this simply isn't the forum for them to discuss their projects.
Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not.
Really? Citation needed that millions of Chinese are working in the free time on any of what you talked about.
The Expanse (and Star Trek before it, etc) provides the inspiration to make the effort. They aren't the problem. It gnaws at me daily that I'm not working for SpaceX, and only because of science fiction like that. I don't (yet) because of work/life balance first and money second. Maybe I should apply for BO.
“ If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
Sci-fi has a long history of inspiring technology, eg Tsiolkovsky
I'm old enough to remember the general optimism we in technology had about the unlocking of human productive potential as automation and globalization freed us from the constraints of scarcity. Marshall Brain, Clay Shirky, and many others write extensively on this zeitgeist.
But that's not what ultimately happened. the zombification of our attention that began in the 1950s has accelerated in the last two decades. We're not volunteering our free time to space exploration collectives, life extension self-experimentation in biohacking hackerspaces, or even traditional enterprises like Habitat for Humanity.
We're clicking heart icons on posts bemoaning billionaires conducting private space exploration, getting angry at CRISPR researchers on Twitter, and passively consuming "marathons" of Hollywood renditions of dystopian future worlds.
This is to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have all that much more free time to begin with. Not because we're all working for SpaceX or in cancer research laboratories, but because the vast majority of the very people CAPABLE of doing so (IQ is in limited supply and not evenly distributed) are actively recruited to make iphone apps more addictive, make pornography engagement higher, and make front-running retail options order flow faster.
Apropos of Netflix (or in this specific example, Amazon Prime Video): There are likely 40 million hours passively poured into marathons of The Expanse in North America, by people with an average IQ in excess of 115 (just by virtue of the type of audience). What if half (approximately the NA/Asia split) of those hours were instead poured into activities that actually got us closer to the technologies depicted?
Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not.