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Keeping Simple

My friend L called after a long time to catch up. They have their oldest getting ready to apply for college next year and the younger one coming in the high-school the same year. Life is the busiest its been for them and L decided to change careers - a controlled middle-crisis experiment like he calls it. We were wondering about what it takes have a simple life in today's world and L posited its a combination of not being too bright and not being too ambitious. And both by self-assessment, not based on what others think of you. I have long believed that I have a relatively simple life compared to my peers - even adjusting for the upheavals I have gone through due to upended marriage and all the trouble that followed in its wake. 

I do believe there is some truth to what L is saying - because the conditions for having a simple life per L, do apply to me. My peers are significantly more ambitious are have goals they are not shy to talk about or achieve. In terms of level of brightness, they are successful in large part because they have confidence in their abilities - which would likely lead them to believe in their own brightness. Reading this Wired story about blue collar vs white collar jobs reminded me of my conversation with L The take-away from the story is a bit of a let-down. I was expecting better and more from Wired on what ChatGPT holds for the future of jobs

If this trend is any indication, we should expect to see softer skills—humor, presence, personality—become the game. In this light, we may already be halfway there without quite realizing it: Perhaps the future belongs to the influencer.

What might it take to have a relatively simple life in a world where both blue and white collar jobs can be disintermediated by AI. I want to believe the rustic and simple will have enduring value - making things by hand that reflects many generations of knowledge and wisdom being passed down. Where a baker has an approximate recipe but her own memories of learning from older generations fill the gaps in that approximation - something unique comes out the other end. A person can be a roboticist in a cheese factory but it is not going to replace what someone in a four hundred year old farm is doing by hand just as generations before them had done. Holding on to these stories, tactile memories by doing things under the guidance of the expert will likely be the path to a simple life in the future. 

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