"We are all so much together, but are all dying of loneliness" - Albert Schweitzer
Thank you for reading the silver jubilee edition of Sustain – a weekly digest of things I stumble on in a week, shuffling through 1000s of articles related to people, technology and sustainability. Of these, some interest me, some are just PR dish outs but some really affect me. I spend more time wondering on the effects and consequences of market developments and how it relates to the future. In the last weekly, I wrote mostly about Future of work and Virtual Reality. I also added a few images on how easy it is to create simulations on Minecraft. Then, during the week, I read an article on people failing to notice Chewbacca on the street while on their phone.
WSJ conducted a Chewbacca test – they had a guy dress up as the famous Wookie to test pedestrians if they noticed him while they walked being distracted by their phones. Almost 50% of them didn't. That’s the increasingly risky trend of people getting hooked to their phones even while doing simple chores.
Couple this trend with the rising need of being forever online. We’re going to be distracted a lot and that's not going to stop. We’re going to wake up and sleep with high power computing electronics on us.
Some of us are already sleeping with phones under the pillow and it has become the first and the last thing we see every day.
People are walking around bumping onto things and other people on the road while being distracted on their phones.
We’re looking at 1 out of 10 people being blind. But then, we’re already entering a world where you will replace your eye with bionic or prosthetic ones. Replaceable human parts such as eyes might happen in that time frame.
But if you’re one of the people who won’t like being operated on your eyes when you’re older, you’ll be wise to wean out the excessive screen time behavior starting now.
I also read about a health advisory that the stress levels caused by mobile delays are more severe to the heart than standing at the edge of a cliff. In fact, waiting in a line at a retail store is apparently less painful than the stress caused by a mobile delay. That’s really bad. Especially with sucky telco connection speeds. So, people out there, just relax if the page doesn't load.
We’re in a social and mobile isolation while at the same time be the most connected humans have ever been. Take a raincheck on this dysfunction. Maybe meditate and include mindfulness. Smartphone use in moderation. Take mobile-free holidays and fewer photos. Maybe, we should do this very often.
China is building the world’s largest radio telescope. Quite a number of people are being displaced for it. But they will be looking for new signs of non-Chinese life out there.
NASA got 18000+ astronaut applications. Very refreshing to see a lot more people interested in what's beyond. Elon Musk in 2013 said “I’d like to die on Mars just not on Impact”
News @Arcluster
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Arun manages market research and consulting at Arcluster. an innovation design and market consulting company that does research and consulting on micro emerging markets and sustainable solutions.
