I have this notion that we're entering a new fuzzy era of rejecting the hyper technological stream that we've been on since the 90's. I notice people now wanting to use their phones for longer (e.g. not replacing them every 2 years because it's the trend) and I feel there's a push back towards certain things like touchscreens in cars being reverted back to clicky buttons.

Sure, there are these crazy developments happening in science. A.I. is changing so fast it's hard to keep up with, and we're going back to the moon! (I say we because it's a human endeavor goddamn it).

But there also seems to be this realization that we might have strained Earth a little too much and that we need to tend to Earth, and ourselves a little bit more.

For reference, I'm a millennial born in '89.

Ok, not utopia per se but a post-scarcity-ish economy where people have their basic needs—food, shelter, healthcare—met virtually automatically. A world where, sure, maybe you have to earn money for certain very scarce luxuries like a tropical island trip, jewelry, nightly wagyu steak dinners, or a penthouse overlooking Central Park, but you get enough basic income to eat healthily and decently every day, have a modest but comfortable home, and not stress out about going to the hospital — and then you can choose if you want to work to earn money to buy additional luxuries or just spend your time to do sports, make art or music, pursue an academic interest, counsel or mentor others in your community, or devote yourself to nature conservation.

I want to get this conversation rolling regularly because it's evident that we're on a cusp of a new economic era — one where AI and automation could free us from a lot of menial physical and intellectual labor and the pretense that everyone has to work to earn their continued existence. It's evident that not everyone has to work. If anything, our economy could be more efficient if incompetent or unmotivated folks just stayed at home and got out of other people's way. I think we all know someone who stays in a job because they need it but are actually a net negative on the organization.

It's an open-ended topic, and there's a lot to talk about in this series—like, how would we distribute the fruits of automation? How would we politically achieve those mechanisms of distribution? What does partially automated healthcare look like?—but I think it'd be good to first talk about current economic inefficiencies that should and could be automated away.

If this tech interests you keep an eye out for June/July when they expect to deploy the sail.

Rocket Lab’s Electron blasted off at 6:32 p.m. ET on April 23, successfully delivering both payloads to low Earth orbit. - Gizmodo

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After a busy initial flight phase, which will last about two months and includes subsystems checkout, the microwave oven-sized CubeSat will deploy its reflective solar sail. The weeks-long test consists of a series of pointing maneuvers to demonstrate orbit raising and lowering, using only the pressure of sunlight acting on the sail. - NASA

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/acs3/