2020 Themes: Digital Exhaustion, Humanization, William Faulkner

Is this the year we step out of the matrix?

I'm coming into 2020, more than anything, tired.

So I made a few pre-emptive changes.

Deactivated Facebook. Deleted Twitter. Instagram Inactive. Phone on Grayscale.

I don't want to be pinged, or notified, I don't want up to the minute notification and access, I don't care if I find out tomorrow, I don't want to be influenced, retargeted, segmented, or typed.

But most of all, I don't want to be distracted.

Distracted from what really matters. (And what does really matter?)

The startup entrepreneur types (myself included) race and race to find the next piece of software or digitized service that will spark the masses and eat the world. Sales, production, product management, development, all must be reasoned with clean inputs to optimize outcomes.

We're drinking Soylent and mechanizing the hacked launch, and engineering and computer science have prevailed as the problem solving mechanisms of the new era.

We're making money, staying lean and recession-proof, working towards acquisition at high multiples of EBITDA.

We'll sleep when the check clears.

We've gained massive efficiencies as we've digitized, but what has been lost?

What William Faulkner told us...

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. 
There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? 
Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again 

...

Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. 

(I highly recommend reading the entirety of his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech HERE.)

I believe Faulkner's message resonates as well in life and entrepreneurship as it does in writing.

In a world where advanced technology combines with continual pressing of the universal fear button (i.e. mass shootings, climate collapse, data breaches, eternal scandal, the ensuing depression), what is left but to get your quick fix and quick buck before the end of days?

Technology is and will continue to be invaluable for the progress of humanity (this is not an anti-technology argument), but while I believe the first 30 years of the internet era was one of technology eating the world, the next 30 year will be characterized by the humanization of technology.

What are the problems of the human heart that we must re-learn in order to better both humanity and technology? To better life and entrepreneurship?

That's a task yet to be determined, but in the short run, it's clear to me that the first step is stepping out of the matrix to catch our breath.