Time is everything.
Time is the one resource that we can never recover. A wish for one more year, one more day, one more minute. Regrets of missed opportunities, wasted time, and wrong place at the wrong time.
Chronos is time as you and I experience it. The ticking of the second hand. The serial march of one thing after another. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Objectively quantified and measured.
Productivity is the quest for expanding chronos. Get more done in the same period of time. AI is the just latest tool that promises to expand chronos.
Kairos is also time, but ontologically very different. A theologian might describe it as God’s time. A secular philosopher might describe it as the right time or the opportune moment.
Kairos is time you remember. Kairos left you yearning for just a little while longer.
As a kid, I remember skimming through my great-grandfather’s journals. Volumes of dry, daily entries about the weather, visitors, and current events. But every once in a while, I came across some extended entries providing a glimpse into thoughts and feeling about the otherwise dry course of events.
Today’s smartphone camera roll serves as your journal. Scroll back, and you’ll find grocery lists, road signs, notes, and a million other everyday objects scattered through the faces and places.
Chronos turned kairos.
AI knows nothing about kairos. At least not now.
Would an AI ever think to itself, “I just wish I had one more day.”
