Curiosity sans friction
(or the new economics of curiosity)
I’ve been trying to put into words how I’ve felt since ChatGPT and AI search became available. There’s an intensity (bordering on anxiety) I feel now and I think it derives from the new immediacy of information.
I’d become accustomed to having more ideas or questions enter into my head than I had practical time to possibly explore or validate. Now, even the sometimes modest reduction of friction, from a few clicks on google, to a single query on perplexity, has been enough to tip the balance into a new way of thinking about my ideas. Now, given the sheer burning proximity of the answer to my questions, I feel a compulsion to respond to them, whereas before I might have been content in ignorance.
This establishes a feedback loop, where fresh information fractally splinters into new derived questions, branching and branching. This is where the new fundamental intensity is derived from, an anxiety of potential. Maybe it shares qualities with FOMO, but here what you're scared of is an unexploited potential to understand - and to make use of that understanding. It’s not necessarily social but personal. To what end?
Many intrusive thoughts are perhaps all the more intrusive, now teetering on that grand trough of potential understanding as opposed to being trapped in a comfortable ignorant friction.
I wonder what effect this might have on my creativity or individuality if this availability of information also now tracks me to pre-existing grooves of thought. Existing information acting like attractors, collapsing the pleasure of ignorant exploration. A mode collapse of thought.
Further threads to explore:
- introduction of electric lighting changing our relationship with productivity and rest
- Are we developing shallower but broader knowledge networks, or does the reduced friction actually allow us to dig deeper than before?
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Let curiosity reign