Consumption

From Noahpinion on ‘You are what you consume’

But at the end of the day, it’s consumption, not production, that defines you as an individual.

That choice is yours and yours alone. Every day that you exist as a consumer in a capitalist society, you are forced to make dozens of decisions about what to spend your money on. Should you buy coffee at Starbucks or Peet’s? Should you buy a new skirt or a new pair of jeans? Should you go watch a Marvel movie or an indie film? Should you subscribe to Noahpinion or to Slow Boring?¹

Each time you make one of those choices, you are forced to interrogate your own preferences. You are forced to look inside your heart/mind/soul/utility function/whatever and decide which brand of coffee you want, which type of clothing you want, which blog you want to read, and so on. It’s all about you.

That’s a vision of a consumption society, but not one that’s meaningless or empty. Instead, it’s a vision of technology freeing us to become more like ourselves. I don’t think this happy outcome is inevitable, but I think it’s getting ignored in most of the discussions about our future.

Tantalising ideas that come from the AI revolution. I like that it’s acknowledged this vision isn’t guaranteed, however, it’s refreshing to consider ideas that don’t have the ‘world is ending due to AI’ in our ears every once in a while.