Work expands to fill the time it is given. It was a common assumption and goal during the Industrial Revolution that once we mechanized our mundane everyday tasks, we would have an abundance of free time for leisure in which to pursue enjoyable activities.
Centuries on, it turns out that it’s actually work that is our most enjoyable pursuit. Humans are by nature industrious and intelligent. We like to occupy our free time with projects: quests of the unknown, creative endeavors, ideas and inventions. More activities and less vegetating on the couch or even deep thinking. There’s only so much we like to think about: after a certain point, we prefer to have our thoughts translated and manifested into verifiable results. We are forever in the pursuit of fulfilment as opposed to a need for comfort. We prefer to do. “The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul,” as Kahlil Gibran put it, and vice-versa.
Whenever we have time, we fill it with new challenges and new problems to solve with the newfound ease of doing. So it turns out that our scarcest commodity is time: seemingly infinite, but never enough. All those contraptions that were born with an aim to create more free time were always outpaced by the number of things we could do to run out of time.
The new inventions of today will be common-place tomorrow, so much so that, we don’t notice their presence but cannot stand their absence. The tools we use for computation, communication, visualization, rapid prototyping, even rapid portability are still new and yet unimpressive. An artificial moon to replace streetlights and reduce power consumption? A hyperloop that takes you across the planet in a matter of minutes? Drones that can erect complex structures in days? Smart materials that expand and shrink as needed? Spaces that detect our presence and provide light or heat? These are conveniences we may not have heard of a few years ago but will be taken for granted within the next few years.
This story is from the November 2018 edition of Indian Architect & Builder.
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This story is from the November 2018 edition of Indian Architect & Builder.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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