I stopped by New York City for 36 hours, to get out of the tech bubble and see what real people were up to. I met old friends who’d grown into New York in the intervening years, and new friends at Momofuku and table tennis at 33rd and 6th; and we caught up.

I asked my friends about their lives. About what they wanted, and what made them most happy.

I did not expect to hear what I did. Somehow, in the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, the capital-I Icon of modernity, the core message I heard from my friends was that they wanted to slow down. To take time to wander, discover, and connect. To escape this infinite loop of greedy efficiency that Silicon Valley had created.

It was a glimpse into a real-life black mirror.

Social media seemed to make us less social by the year. The dopamine hits kept coming faster, with short and shorter-form video beckoning us into the night, recommendation engines that know our buttons better than we know ourselves, and now “artificial intelligence” that promises to take our day jobs away too. And in it’s wake? A world screaming to stop, slow down, hold on a second.

So who are the evil masterminds driving us to this ignoble death? What do they want from us?

When I boarded my flight at SFO, I had no idea “silicon valley” was at such odds with the world. In fact, many in the valley share those sentiments. Just like everyone else, we doom scroll TikTok, reels, or lately even Linkedin, wishing we could stop. There is no mastermind, just perverted economic incentives and engineers doing what they can.

What my friends wanted was to build community and help people—be it their fellow students, their direct reports, immigrants in need of asylum, or their own children. And to experience the fine-grained fractal of life—stumbling upon the hidden monastary or art gallery, or that tea shop on Sullivan St; going to concerts and meeting people and seeing all the ways there are to see our world.

That’s really no different from what people in the valley want—to build community and experience the world. They go to work, take walks with loved ones; they meet friends for dinner and volunteer with their communities and causes. Those in the Valley are real people, hardly different from those in the City. So how can they stand complicit to the trail of destruction their technology is creating?

One friend, Ae, described the climate at Columbia. “You see the police brutality on our own campus—and you either at least understand your complicity and feel bad; or you are intentionally ignorant, literally in support of this fascist trend in our country.” Her parents did not get informed. “Do you think we’re bad people?” they asked her. She didn’t. They weren’t here in NYC, so how could they understand? But she was. And if she hadn’t been shown that she had agency in the situation, “I’d actually not be mentally ok” she said. But she has seen her agency. Ae is in touch. And she does what she can.

I think many in the Valley live the same way. They stay informed of their own problems, and do what they can to help. They run their businesses and mentor their employees to help them grow. They take their kids to school and find ways to entertain and enrich them on the weekends.

Even the entrepreneurs. They work to create products that people want to use, imagining what the world would look like if everyone could find things on the internet or have a personal research assistant. They’re trying to help people and build community too—but “community” starts to look global when you build software. That’s why they talk about “impact” all day. But at that scale, people start to look like numbers.

And in the Valley, we fight our own grassroots resistances against the technologies turned sour. Many people I know don’t use Instagram. Many find jobs (and in fact, many hire) through friends of friends, rather than Linkedin. Rather than following stories, I catch up with my friends by meeting up and talking—really talking—strengthening those human connections I care about rather than falling prey to false dopamine.

It’s no accident that mindfulness hippie culture also grew up in the Valley. In this world of noise, people really do talk about focus, mindfulness, and intentionality. The Valley is very goal oriented, so it’s more robust to the social change of technology. There’s no question of whether AI is cheating, or whether you should put down your phone in preparation for bedtime—anything goes if it helps you become your best self.

And that’s where it gets dangerous. Your best self can be tainted by society, with pressure to do more, work faster, be better.

Our clocks—our economy assume that time marches on uniformly, objectively, relentlessly. That fast is the opposite of slow. And that more returns faster is what matters.

But our experience is not so mechanical. When scrolling, the night flies by—not because we’re going fast, but because we aren’t paying attention. Not really. And the fastest athletes, and programmers, live long days because they’re paying attention: they’re really trying, every moment of the day.

“You know albert?” one friend, Ies, so earnestly said, “the next ten years are going to pass by soo fast. And i just want to slow down.”

“Why do you want to slow down?” I asked.

“Because there’s opportunity in not rushing. Rather than taking the same D line, you could walk and see the monestary and the galleries. And love them so much, love the city and yourself and life so much. In speed, we loose so much experience.”

And I thought for a long time.

Because I love the living at the speed of silicon. And I think that there’s great experiences to be had in speed too—you get to fail fast, get better, and do more. Be it in writing or in product, you can’t force the words out. But sometimes you should just sit down and freewrite. And it’s not about being fast or slow. It’s just about seeing and doing our part, in our own time.

(Names adjusted and quotes paraphrased. Thank you to my friends who took the time out of their busy schedules to stay in touch <3)

 › thoughts