Wildfires, heat waves, floods, droughts have taken over news feeds, destroyed life’s and hobbled national economies. Over the last 40 years the threat of Climate Change has been discussed and plans to mitigate it have been sabotaged by short-sighted vested interests of corporations and governments.
These developments have gone hand in hand with an increase in speed – of production processes; of vehicles; of computation, and consumption. As a corollary, the pace of waste generation, in terms of quantity and type also increased. Increasing speed, decreasing time taken has always been a marker of progress. Thus, the Domino Pizza 30 minutes delivery promise and Zomato promising delivery in 10 minutes. Much of this has been fuelled by the growing appetite for energy and fossil fuel.
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The International Olympic Committee’s motto ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ has succinctly captured not only what was admired but the philosophy of mankind’s existence. However, humankind is paying the price for this desire for speed.
The road sign ‘speed thrills but kills’ has turned out to be true even off the road. Though wearing helmets and seatbelts are tried and tested on-road safety precautions, their environmental equivalent is not enough at this juncture.
In this context these are adaptation techniques and do not solve the problem.
The problem is speed and the desire for more. Thus, there is need to slow things down, and do less.
Much has been written about quiet quitting – the act of ensuring work does not take over one’s life. This has more to do with personal philosophies of freedom. However, the idea of working less hours collectively is an idea that is taking root. At this very moment in the UK, 60,000 private and public sector employees are participating in one of the largest workplace experiments. They work 4 days a week.
No one is productive through the working week. A study in the UK of 1989 office workers found that 79% of respondents were not productive through the day. The average for actual hours of productivity was 2 hrs 53 minutes. The rest of the time was spent on extra-curricular activities surfing on social media, smoke, coffee breaks, etc.
It would seem that the Parkinson Principle ‘Work expands to fill the time available’ – is as true as the 80/20 Law 80% of productivity is achieved in 20% of the time.
How wrong is it to say that there is an entire economy based on being less productive? Corporates spend on infrastructure which ends up being used for other purposes, working hours spent on responding to family and friends on social media provides real time data to advertisers, driving to office for a few hours work eats into resources and adds to traffic congestion and pollution, coffee and cigarette breaks aid the beverage and tobacco industry.
There are potential downsides to the 4-day week. An article in the Harvard Business Review quotes feedback from employees in a New Zealand 4-day week experiment. It included increase in stress and decrease in innovation.
The concept of a 4-day week is not about doing the same amount of work in a shorter period. It is no surprise then that stress would increase. The idea of 4-day week is doing work more efficiently – which means prioritisation, with less resources and with less personal cost.
The shift to a 4-day week will be a slow process because it needs a mindset makeover. However, the socio-economic benefits are touted to be immense less traffic on the road, less energy consumption therefore less pollution.
No Need for Speed
Increase in computing speed has created the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data mining.
The AI race is a power guzzler. As per Open AI, a San Francisco-based company, energy requirements for AI increased 300,000 times between 2012 and 2018. In 2020 this company developed an algorithm to learn to manipulate the Rubiks Cube using a robotic arm. According to sources, the operation consumed 2.8 gigawatt-hours of electricity, which OpenAI deny. A paper presented by researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, states that training a large Natural Language Processing (NLP) model consumes energy equivalent to that consumed in the lifetime use of a car including in its manufacture.
The US Dept of Energy estimates that 2% of energy is consumed by data centres. According to a 2018 article in Nature.com, globally data centres consume 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually. The consumers include Bitcon, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet. These companies collect data – consumption and search patterns, photos posted online, etc. This is converted into information which is sold.
Information is still power, but the world pays a price.
Today fast cars are an escape to nowhere. It is a dichotomy which humans have wrought on themselves a road full of slow moving fast and powerful cars. It would be rich if AI is finally used to resolve problems caused in the process of its development.
Faster phones, better Internet services all have a cost. Herein lies a fundamental dilemma.
Is there need for speed when the destination is no longer an unknown but looms ahead of us? The epoch of progress defined by speed and its myriad connotations needs a complete overhaul.
Implementing the idea of progress has brought humankind to an existential crisis. The International Olympic Committee recently added ‘Communiter’ meaning ‘together’ to the Olympic motto. This is an acceptance of the incompleteness of what has been admired till now. Humans need to take a breather to reconfigure the idea of progress from doing more with more to doing more together with less.
(Samir Nazareth writes on socio-economic and environmental issues)
