A new animation by Emily Downe exploring what happens when we disturb life’s natural rhythms. How do we understand our worth in a culture that idolises productivity. 30/10/2024

This short film explores the rhythms of waking and resting embedded in the natural world. The film explores the impact of productivity boosting artificial technologies on our world. We can do more, make more, profit more, but without boundaries. But what do we lose when we pursue limitless productivity?  

Interested? This animation is part of wider research by Theos on productivity. For more, click here  

Script for In Sync with the Sun  

The war against sleep began when artificial light broke into the night. It’s an absurdity, a bad habit. ‘There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all’, Thomas Edison said. Be productive. Rest is for the dead. 

Slack jawed, drifting into enchantment and mystery,  

The unlimited mind  

Playtime  

A waste of time. Every living thing thrives in cycles of activity and rest,  

In Sync with the sun. 

Light, dark, sleep, wake, rest, work, play. But for us, artificial light took over the night. 

Out of sync. 

Marching to the beat of a different drum. Now we decide when the day is done. It never is. Prove your worth. Every second counts. Rest less, burn out. Shut down. Artificial light wasn’t enough. Enter: artificial minds. Limitless machines, relentlessly efficient, A constant bloodless pulse. In the race for productivity, artificial minds may easily win. But what is lost? Creating, caring, giving  

Computes productivity: 0. But to us, we see true value. You’re not a machine. Light, dark, sleep, wake, rest, work, play,  

Repaint the boundary line,  

Make yourself at home. The only thing that can stay awake is not awake at all. 

About the Productivity Project  

“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything” claimed the economist Paul Krugman. Throughout the twentieth century, productivity improved dramatically across the developed world in a greater increase than in the previous 2000 years. Driven by life changing technologies, such as electricity, combustion engines, and phones, living standards increased sevenfold. But since the 2008 financial crisis, despite computerisation and the internet, productivity growth in many countries has been low, static or even, in the case of Japan, falling.  

Is faltering productivity growth a policy problem to be fixed, or is our obsession with productivity (both economic and cultural) an unhelpful measure of true human flourishing?  

In this stream of work, Theos explores the changing pressures on (and demands of) our society to argue that we must balance productivity against other measures of success, especially in an increasingly service–based economy and an age of climate crisis. We particularly explore the natural limits of human attention and the planet we call home, as well as the likely impacts of artificial intelligence, to ask: what does a productive human really look like?  

Film Credits  

Written, directed and designed by Emily Downe 

Animated by Emily Downe and Martha Halliday  

Music and sound by Jan Willem de With 

Additional sounds by Richard Johnsen  

Produced by Theos with thanks to The Fetzer institute

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