Designer’s Essay Exercise no. 1 on FOMO Was Always the Product
I see so much content revolving around getting better. Sounds good on the surface, but I'm talking about writing or should I say propaganda on self efficiency and performance, still sounds like a positive thing. However, humans can't be measured solely by the results we produce... well, that is the very definition of capitalism. Hmm, this is becoming more challenging than I thought to make an argument. Let me share what sprung up this thought and my urge to write.
I woke up today feeling good, you know, like in an organic sense. The sunbathing over me, natural wake up, no grogginess. Until I saw a notification from X, and decided to check. It had been a while since I visited and wanted to check what the media landscape looked over there. Not surprisingly, a lot about AI, especially revolving around content that is more about how someone made incredible money in a short span of time. Wouldn't we all like that.
First liners with "This guy made $30k in 30 days." or "I don't know about you, but I'm watching 5 hours of FREE AI course by a successful person." or "Using psychology to stay consistent." and etc.
And this sudden feeling of knowledge/skill FOMO sprung up. That self-deprecating thinking of I'm not good enough right now. And I feel the whole AI scene is pushing that agenda. I would assume this type of content does push users to use the AI services, and no reason to proactively stop that.
If you think about it, the content being sought out by us is: to be that person striving in a capitalistic economy. If capitalism is the commodification of everything, which includes our time. Then the most valuable and common asset exchange is time for money.
Time is one of the most important assets to exchange. AI today is imagined to help replace our labor time through acceleration and automation; and therefore our escape into financial freedom (I would assume that's what people want.) Though if AI can really do that, I'd feel AI is the beginning of the end of a capitalistic system.
However, it's not a hurrah. I'm not saying this is good. If time for money was the exchange or controlling factor needed to create hierarchy. The entry of AI is a dissolution of that "time for money" control, hence the society may move in a new direction to set new standards of hierarchy. We had feudalism before, and then we had socio-economic statuses. Perhaps a sprinkle of oligarchy here and there. And this new direction that we're headed can be either a step back or a new found land.
And this new direction feels there can now be a psychological economy, in that those who find confidence through skills of navigating with AI in contrast to those who lack any knowledge of it, have an upper hand in providing education or a sole point of knowledge. Which creates dependency psychologically, economically and most likely emotionally.
Food for thought.
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Originally published on LinkedIn
