When you get right down to it, there are two types of time. There is valuable, fulfilling, productive time. For example, teaching your child to catch a baseball. Or attending an important business lunch. And then there is junk time. Like being bored, travelling from A to B, or doing chores. In the early part of the 21st century, we began to reduce the burden of junk time through a process called innovation. We realised that the most energy-sapping part of experience is human interaction. To fix this, we were able to depersonalise lots of junk time activities, so that human interaction would no longer be necessary. For example, we made it so getting a taxi or purchasing groceries and consumer goods were automated and impersonal experiences. This freed us up to chat with our friends, solve puzzles, and enjoy premium content through our handheld electronic devices. Of course, it was quite distracting to still have to be physically present during junk time. We would find ourselves sometimes missing trains due to not paying attention. There were collisions between stationary objects and users of handheld electronic devices. There were fatalities on roads and in train stations. Fortunately, we had already taught self-driving cars to be autonomous, navigate efficiently and almost completely avoid other vehicles. It did not turn out, in the end, to be very hard to apply this technology to our bodies. While “checked out,” one could simply direct ones’ muscles to follow routine actions. For example, walking, exercising, or masticating tough foods. Travel was automated, so that we only needed to direct our bodies to move between two points. One could check back in when one arrived, if needed. A notable advantage of “checking out” was that there was no more need for handheld electronic devices. Since bodies generally did not require attention, there was no need for a physical screen with which to chat with friends, solve puzzles or enjoy premium content. Fatalities declined on roads and in train stations. As it would be tedious to continually reinstruct the body in these routine actions, most users used a calendar to schedule their bodies’ activities. For example, wake up, take on nutrients, exercise, and so forth. Some users also preferred to “check out” for maintaining friendships, and certain family interactions. Today, of course, junk time is entirely a thing of the past. The little-used “check in to body” feature was removed several releases ago, as part of our commitment to making your experience of Life more fulfilling and productive for you. There have been hardly any complaints.
