About Hobby Life

Post 1998:

There’s a few ways I see the future unfolding. Like three or four. But there’s one that I’m particularly excited about. Now that all of our jobs will be done by machines and all of our critical thinking handled by AI, I have a feeling that life will be solely about our hobbies. Our hobbies will be all that we have, because we’re unemployed and obsolete, and I think this is a fantastic situation that we should celebrate.

Work used to give people a sense of meaning and focus, but that’s stupid. Thanks to the twelve guys that understand supercomputing a lot and humanity zero, we can all forget about purpose and get to what matters; either being destroyed in a terrible mechanized Armageddon, or having time to pursue our hobbies full time.

If you think about it, a lot of people are way ahead of the game. Millions already video themselves doing things they would do in their free time and post them for the world. They treat their hobby as a job. A calling. This will be everything we do now, because again, no burdensome jobs.

Now, it may be that nothing really changes. We’ve always had technology breakthroughs and we’ve always had people say that the machines will take our jobs. That’s true. This new world may be more like the old one than we expect. If so, boo. I already have a device for almost every function in my life, and now I want to be completely free to pursue my pet projects.

The only problem is, the machines might start doing my hobbies better than me. If a “fake me” knits better sweaters than I do and posts the sweaters like a real person, only with smoother skin, that wouldn’t be fair or fun. Then we would have a serious problem.

I don’t want to live in a world like that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried for years to make my hobby my job. Writing is a passion. The pursuit of transcendence through language seems like a worthy use of time. As is showing people how to make your own butter or whatever your hobby is.

So I’m getting aboard this brave new world. I’m not necessarily thrilled that our minds and autonomy are going to be supplanted and that we’ll essentially be enslaved, but there are real upsides that I don’t think I fairly considered. Your life is your hobby. You are your hobby. And your hobby is now. Get excited!

Cheers and see you after.