It seems to me very clearly that this loneliness crisis is alive and gathering pace on a day-to-day basis.
Of course, this is potentially just the view of someone who's 53 years old, who grew up, and whose life view was forced in a completely different time, place, and technological space but as I look at the connections that young people have and the way they live their lives and build relationships, it makes me sad, and it makes me think that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.
I believe the best way to fix that is to use technology to make us more human.
I don't mind using technology as a tool to free up time to allow me to spend time with people, I don't mind using an electric screwdriver to make screwing things into the wall at my new house easier, I don't mind using a hammer to knock in nails and I don't mind using technology to make me more effective and efficient and even better in the work that I do both on the business and in the business.
However, what Mark Zuckerberg has recently said about Meta's strategic approach to AI and the fact that Americans only have three friends, is AI friends and AI counselling, which seems to be absolutely perverse.
It's probably fair to say that Zuckerberg is the cause of the problem (or at least one of them).
Social media has allowed us to believe that we have more friends than we actually have, while having fewer and fewer meaningful connections to people, it's also allowed us to say things in public that we would never have said in public before the technology existed, and allowed us to fracture society through the middle.
See 'The Madness of Crowds' by Douglas Murray, the book which absolutely opened my eyes to the damage and danger of social media in society around the concept of intersectionality.
If we move on from that and explore the possibility that the person who is responsible for causing much of the damage through the use of technology which removes our connection to humanity, is suggesting that the answer to the damage that he's caused is to use some more of his more advanced technology to have friends who are produced by the technology; it's clear to see that the problem is hellish.
In my morning (and this was written on a Friday) I spent 2 hours going around our new house and farm (yes, I know, wanky) with an architect who is actually a friend of mine who I ride my bike with. It was part of the work of the project that we have for building and changing and altering the place that we live and it is a huge and extraordinary privilege to be able to do this, I totally get that but I spent time with Alison and Oliver and me and our little dogs that we have wandering round the house and wandering round the outside creatively exploring what was possible, what wasn't possible, even having a small argument with Alison in front of Oliver about the direction we were going, and generally just being human. I'm not entirely sure that I would have felt the same way if Oliver were a hologram that I'd never met before in real life.
Following that, I met up with Louis, who was preparing for his big triathlon of the year, and we had a coffee in a lovely coffee shop in Nottingham, shooting the breeze, reminding ourselves of things we've done over the last 10 years and talked about the upcoming Sunday for him. I'll probably write about that more later. Then I met my old bank manager, who's retired, for lunch. It was a work thing, a mentoring thing, all of these meetings teach me tons, and then I went to work.
I was able to get to work for about 13:30 in my own place, working with technology that was making it better and easier, talking to friends and colleagues in Switzerland about up and coming meetings in Paris next week, and then getting down to doing stuff that actually mattered in terms of technological work and tasks.
The key to that day, though, and what made it so wonderful, was the people I sat with, met, spoke to and felt connected to; that is never f*ck*ng happening in a million years with an AI friend.
If you are so lonely, and I know that so many people are, we need to give you a solution where you're connected to flesh and to human beings, we don't need to pay Zuckerberg a single penny more for his AI app or his Ray-Ban sunglasses.
That is a totally f*ck*d up concept.
Blog Post Number - 4174
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