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What Matters Takes Time
🇪🇸 Spain /Culture & Society

What Matters Takes Time

From La Vanguardia · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

Analysis Sources not specified Context piece
  • The article critiques the modern societal drive for immediacy, which is increasingly applied to politics, education, science, and culture.
  • While digital economies and AI offer instant results, essential processes like learning, building trust, and scientific research require significant time.
  • The author warns that a "crisis of waiting" reflects a dangerous crisis of the future, where impatience undermines deep learning and meaningful progress.

In an era of instant gratification, where ordering pizza, booking hotels, or consulting a doctor can be done with a few clicks, any process involving waiting becomes increasingly bothersome. This societal orientation towards immediate results, driven by digital economies and now amplified by AI, is extending into critical areas like politics, education, science, and culture. The article argues that this relentless pursuit of speed is fundamentally at odds with the nature of meaningful progress in these fields.

While digital platforms and AI can expedite tasks and provide quick answers, they cannot replace the time required for genuine learning, understanding, and development. The article emphasizes that democracy is slow, universities are slow, educating a child is slow, conducting scientific research is slow, and restoring a forest is slow. Building trust, learning a language, mastering an instrument, or grasping complex historical or scientific principles all demand dedicated time and effort.

Recent research from Stockholm and Hong Kong universities analyzed the work of nearly 30,000 Chinese secondary students over two and a half years. The findings revealed that while students using AI improved their exercise scores by 18% and reduced their time spent by 30%, their actual performance plummeted in exams taken without AI access. Scores dropped 18% in secondary school and 24% in university entrance exams. This demonstrates that AI can reduce the time to produce an answer but not the time needed to acquire knowledge. Students who maintained their study time, even with AI, continued to learn effectively.

The author posits that this "crisis of waiting" is a symptom of a broader "crisis of the future." The prevailing impatience not only alters consumption patterns but also risks contaminating institutions and undermining the quality of outcomes that depend on sustained dedication. The article concludes that true value in areas like art, science, and personal relationships is cultivated through patience and time, not instant gratification.

AI allows reducing the time needed to produce the answer, but not the time needed to acquire knowledge.

— Article analysisSummarizing the findings on AI's impact on learning.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by La Vanguardia in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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