Parker Smith
What does it feel like to live in a time of outsized consequence?
Parker Smith is one of the most thoughtful people I know. A self-described “vibe-coder and simple liturgist”, he speaks about technological advances with a level of nuance and consideration that I find astounding. I’ve heard him describe a correlative escalation between technology’s computing ability and our ever-growing temptation to live as machines. I wanted to know more about that temptation and what it feels like. Take a peek at what Parker stays up to here.
I’m collecting interviews that center on this question: What does it feel like to live in a time of outsized consequence? I’m less interested in abstract opinions than I am in hearing specific memories and personal histories. If you’re interested in contributing to the ongoing project, take a moment to provide me with some information here.
Below is an excerpt from my interview with Parker Smith.
Are we living in an age of outsized consequence? Yeah, it’s the water we’re swimming in. But it’s not just AI. It goes deeper than that and it’s hard to see.
Before 20 years ago, the internet was hardly a thing. Forty years ago, computers were hardly a thing. And now it’s prolific, and we’re only just experiencing the consequences of giving kids smartphones and being on social media. And there are some very short-term consequences that we’ve found, such as depression and anxiety in teens–myself included.
I was a teenager when Facebook came out, and I think that hamstrung my social development in some ways that I had to overcome in college.
There are a lot of people thinking about this at a macro level, and some of the implications of a globalized, networked world are disconnection between inputs and outputs, where inputs over here might be advertising or whatever. It’s not you tilling the soil, planting the seed, and growing your crops. There’s a gap between inputs, outputs, and reality.
AI presents a black box between input and output. And so that dissociation between inputs and outputs and the slow yield of control really is the trade-off with some of the technological gains. Although the technological gains could accelerate significant things like medical care and DIY individuals that spin up awesome things that otherwise would have been under-resourced.
But the compromise is that you’re abdicating your agency to something that happens between input and output.
Yes. And there are cascading implications for living as a machine in the modern day.
Again, this is the water we’re swimming in. 50, 60, maybe 80 years ago, televisions weren’t as prolific. So even just as recently as this last week, we–first of all, we saw Toy Story 5 the other day and were totally motivated to ditch our TV for a minute–but we successfully weaned our kids off of watching TV.
And the difference was notable. It was significant. Before, they would fuss and whine for TV, and after they would watch a show, they’d be grumpy and dysregulated. Now they’re imagining in a fresh way. They’re playing board games. They’re being creative with their minds and with their bodies.
There were days when I, or even my wife, growing up, would spend all day in front of the TV. It maybe wasn’t as common for me, but if we’re talking first principles of living as machine, I think anything that risks dissociating our mind and body could fall within that category.
When I was a kid, I got a Game Boy Color. At five. And I loved that thing. And I played it a lot. I remember laying by the window, sun shining on me, playing Golden Sun, and my friends and neighbors were playing outside. And I played that game and Pokémon so much that I would dream in these video game interfaces. It was so immersive. Which was fun!
And so again, these are nuanced dances. But I think it’s that wedge of dissociating body and mind and maybe more. Soul, I don’t know. But again, it’s the water we’re swimming in.
I had a flip phone in middle school and got an iPhone when I went to college. But we all know that experience and the temptation. We all try the screen time things, and it just doesn’t work.
There was one week, Holy Week, two or three years ago, where I turned my phone off for a week, and it took seven straight days, but on the seventh day, I felt like I was mentally awake in a way that I had not been.
But working in knowledge work, screen time–again, the water we swim in–that’s been an ongoing experience. To do my job, I need to be on the computer.
So there are two threads here. Thread one, the status quo, you introduce AI. AI accelerates output in a way that burnout–there are headlines everywhere about tech burnout. Because if you’re AI-pilled, you’re cranking. But then you’re cranking and you crash hard. And trying to keep up with the speed of compute–all the while, wanting to have a nuanced approach like I do, shifting back and forth from creative to a judgment-analysis role is exhausting.
And so you try and balance it, and maybe you don’t multitask as hard as you initially did because it’s just hard and you burnout. So there’s that first thread: In the status quo, you introduce AI, i.e., living as machine–it’s just complete and total burnout.
On the other hand, the second thread: speech-to-text has surfaced as a significant layer where the people who are nuanced in their approach to AI are trying to create new surfaces. So, what if–and this is just my personal opinion–the last 20 to 30 years of knowledge work are actually inhumane? To be chained to a desk working on a computer 40 hours a week, that’s no way to live. But that’s the water we’re swimming in.
What if there’s a reconciliation where the phone becomes capable of doing some of the things that otherwise were just computer admin, so that you’re freed up to do something creative or physical or relational?
I think creativity, physicality, and relationships are the countermeasures of automation. But again, this was the promise of microwave ovens. “It’ll be so efficient!” It’ll be instant and you’ll have more time for doing activities. That’s never played out. We always use that space to get ahead.
So the temptation to live as machine will not go away unless you intentionally shape an alternative. What would it look like to look human?
So being able to discern when to leverage machines and to use machines and when not to is important. Ideas like Sabbath. Ideas like reading a book. Spending time building relational capital. Those are all levers and knobs to weigh and use in this next era.
It’s our responsibility to discern, and the human is accountable.
I heard that before artificial light, people didn’t just burn lamps and campfires all night, because that was a waste of fuel. They’d go to sleep when the sun went down and wake up at sunrise.
But apparently, for the vast majority of human history, people slept in two sleep cycles: first sleep and second sleep. And in between, there’d be an hour or two where you’d be in sort of a fugue state, this kind of lucid sleep-awake.
And so I tried that a couple of months ago, and it was like being half asleep, and it was awesome.
What did you do in that half-asleep state?
Just thought.
And do you remember any of the things that came to mind?
Well, last night–I have a wiggly one-year-old, so my fugue-state was not long lasting–but during that time I was like, this is why humans invented poetry and music and memorized things. You didn’t have YouTube to watch or pointless emails to check. You didn’t even have books to read until several hundred years ago. People carried culture in their minds.
And I’ve outsourced reminders, but we’ve outsourced a lot more. I’m not saying we should go back to pre-incandescent lighting or indoor plumbing or any of those things. But there are trade-offs to technological gains. Who memorizes poetry anymore? What a tragic loss.
And you’re wondering, maybe the trade-off is, “I could outsource some of this admin work, but what can I reclaim?”
Yeah. Some headspace.
Because we no longer have to stoke a fire to stay warm and see. But this has implications—we’re also going to lose our sense of rhetoric and poetry and beauty.
So at the very least, AI is bringing up awesome conversations. We’re asking, what does it mean to be human? And I contend that it means a lot. And we need to reclaim some of the things that AI hasn’t taken, but that we’ve given away slowly over several hundred years.
Let me know if you’re interested in contributing to this ongoing project.
And please share the opportunity with others!
Jacob