Reading Joyce Appleby’s book Relentless Revolution, I’m struck by a parallel between how capitalism could not be unlocked until farm labor was made more efficient and how post-digital economics cannot be unlocked until thinking is made more efficient. Back then the challenge was to improve it so it didn’t suck up 80% of human energy. “Thinking” similarly sucks up 80% of human attention today. But it’s just thought-farming. We’re attached to it the same way farmers were attached to farming lifestyles and identities.We’re stuck because we can’t imagine the future in the same way farmers were stuck trying to imagine capitalism through the lens of pre-capitalist trade and commerce caught in a Malthusian boom-bust prison.

from Venkatesh Rao's Blyg ↗ · snapshot of v1

While I’m brewing this:

I believe many of human struggles persist because of a lack of imagination.

Therefore, doing something the second time becomes significantly easier, even if the individual has only witnessed it being done by others. Directly observing someone doing something establishes a conceptual framework in mind in a manner that reading about it does not.

I think air travel across countries could serve as an offset to this problem. It resembles time travel or a pre-determined dream where waking up is decided by the dreamer themselves. Like people can intentionally decide to hop on a seat to sleep for 12h and wake up in a reality largely detached from their previous one. Living in the future or past is a bit possible, and a flight ticket away ;)