<story><title>Why are Adults so busy?</title><url>http://debarghyadas.com/writes/why-are-adults-so-busy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sapphireblue</author><text>I also wonder how we manage to stay busy given that most home tasks (dishwashing, laundry, cleaning (roombas) and even cooking - see multicooker devices) are already automated, with &amp;quot;doing laundry&amp;quot; meaning merely loading and unloading the washing machine.&lt;p&gt;I think you have a good point about idle time being gadgeted away.&lt;p&gt;Also I think there is a tremendous potential in automation of physical labor (including remaining daily tasks). I wonder how much more free time we would have, if only 10% of workforce that currently does web&amp;#x2F;mobile&amp;#x2F;game apps (including myself) would apply their skills to automating their daily life with simple robots.&lt;p&gt;Also, imagine relatively cheap mass-produced robots that have embedded computer vision and motion planning accessible via DOM-like API (with javascript, of course), and what would millions of web developers do with that, with their current javascript&amp;#x2F;DOM skills directly applicable to manipulating the physical world. Does it sound too good to be true? I don&amp;#x27;t know.</text></item><item><author>anexprogrammer</author><text>Well this is clearly written by someone without committments and children.  Young adults &lt;i&gt;used&lt;/i&gt; to be having children.&lt;p&gt;With young kids around, the laundry and responsibility for dependents figures become hours &lt;i&gt;daily,&lt;/i&gt; not weekly.  When they&amp;#x27;re a bit older there&amp;#x27;s less cleaning but now you&amp;#x27;re running them around more and ensuring they meet their commitments.&lt;p&gt;With more gadgets, chemicals and domestic appliances we&amp;#x27;ve just invented higher standards and hundreds of new things to do.  The to do list is 20x longer, but each task takes less time.&lt;p&gt;Whilst we might not want to return to weekly bathing and keeping a room, only for visitors, &amp;quot;for best&amp;quot; of Victorian times, some rebalance might be a good idea.  Might even turn out to be good for skin and gut bacteria and the rise of eczema etc.&lt;p&gt;What we don&amp;#x27;t have, as it&amp;#x27;s been gadgeted away, is downtime.  Kids, and many adults, today can not cope with being bored (the normal state for kids in the 70s for perhaps an hour or two daily).  I saw that very clearly with my own kids and all their friends over the years.  What used to be a trigger for inventing a game, building a den, or making something new with lego is far more filled with minutes on YT.  More and more we&amp;#x27;ve filled every second with things to do - by &amp;quot;necessity&amp;quot; and by choice.&lt;p&gt;In trying to make life easier most of us no longer seem to have time (or often inclination) to just chill watching the world go by for an hour a day.&lt;p&gt;Seems it all got too fragmented.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anexprogrammer</author><text>Laundry - we have an order of magnitude more clothes than in the 1900s, and wash them much more frequently - far beyond what&amp;#x27;s needed to not be dirty or smelly.  Kids have the same amount, and variety, as adults.  Any time saved is far more than compensated for by sheer quantity and frequency compared to olden days.&lt;p&gt;Dishwashers help with the bulk, but you end up with more dishes in the household (not worth firing up the dishwasher til it&amp;#x27;s full).  With the things they can&amp;#x27;t do, and the baked food they sometimes miss, the rinsing beforehand, the loading and unloading, the saving is marginal.  But 20 mins a day with hands in soapy water isn&amp;#x27;t fun, so...&lt;p&gt;Cooking -- we make more interesting things with far more ingredients, as the fridge is the size of a 60s house, rather than just keeping milk and cheese fresh.  Or order takeout.&lt;p&gt;So track record says whatever future inventions bring us to save time, work (and chores) will expand to fill time available, and we&amp;#x27;ll be even more fragmented, with &lt;i&gt;even more&lt;/i&gt; stuff.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why are Adults so busy?</title><url>http://debarghyadas.com/writes/why-are-adults-so-busy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sapphireblue</author><text>I also wonder how we manage to stay busy given that most home tasks (dishwashing, laundry, cleaning (roombas) and even cooking - see multicooker devices) are already automated, with &amp;quot;doing laundry&amp;quot; meaning merely loading and unloading the washing machine.&lt;p&gt;I think you have a good point about idle time being gadgeted away.&lt;p&gt;Also I think there is a tremendous potential in automation of physical labor (including remaining daily tasks). I wonder how much more free time we would have, if only 10% of workforce that currently does web&amp;#x2F;mobile&amp;#x2F;game apps (including myself) would apply their skills to automating their daily life with simple robots.&lt;p&gt;Also, imagine relatively cheap mass-produced robots that have embedded computer vision and motion planning accessible via DOM-like API (with javascript, of course), and what would millions of web developers do with that, with their current javascript&amp;#x2F;DOM skills directly applicable to manipulating the physical world. Does it sound too good to be true? I don&amp;#x27;t know.</text></item><item><author>anexprogrammer</author><text>Well this is clearly written by someone without committments and children.  Young adults &lt;i&gt;used&lt;/i&gt; to be having children.&lt;p&gt;With young kids around, the laundry and responsibility for dependents figures become hours &lt;i&gt;daily,&lt;/i&gt; not weekly.  When they&amp;#x27;re a bit older there&amp;#x27;s less cleaning but now you&amp;#x27;re running them around more and ensuring they meet their commitments.&lt;p&gt;With more gadgets, chemicals and domestic appliances we&amp;#x27;ve just invented higher standards and hundreds of new things to do.  The to do list is 20x longer, but each task takes less time.&lt;p&gt;Whilst we might not want to return to weekly bathing and keeping a room, only for visitors, &amp;quot;for best&amp;quot; of Victorian times, some rebalance might be a good idea.  Might even turn out to be good for skin and gut bacteria and the rise of eczema etc.&lt;p&gt;What we don&amp;#x27;t have, as it&amp;#x27;s been gadgeted away, is downtime.  Kids, and many adults, today can not cope with being bored (the normal state for kids in the 70s for perhaps an hour or two daily).  I saw that very clearly with my own kids and all their friends over the years.  What used to be a trigger for inventing a game, building a den, or making something new with lego is far more filled with minutes on YT.  More and more we&amp;#x27;ve filled every second with things to do - by &amp;quot;necessity&amp;quot; and by choice.&lt;p&gt;In trying to make life easier most of us no longer seem to have time (or often inclination) to just chill watching the world go by for an hour a day.&lt;p&gt;Seems it all got too fragmented.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wolfgke</author><text>&amp;gt; I wonder how much more free time we would have, if only 10% of workforce that currently does web&amp;#x2F;mobile&amp;#x2F;game apps (including myself) would apply their skills to automating their daily life with simple robots.&lt;p&gt;The skills for building a robot are quite different from the skills for building &amp;quot;classical&amp;quot; software. For example for classical software one can do correctness proofs&amp;#x2F;analysis, while for robots one can only do empirical tests or correctness proofs relative to a strongly abstracted world model. So in other words: Applying their (existing) skills into that direction would not have much value. On the other hand: If these people were investing years to develop the skills necessary for robot development, this would probably help; but who of this group is really willing (and can afford) to do so?</text></comment>