Deskilling the body

Deskilling the body aeon.co We have fallen into habits that are steadily deskilling the human body, eroding capacities honed by evolution to support our wellbeing as we move through the world. Some of these capacities are weakening through disuse: we have come to rely on our phones, for example, and now, increasingly, on AI, to rapidly do work that would once have required something more physical – like looking around, or asking someone, or going to find and consult a book. Reliance on GPS may weaken both our spatial attention and the fluency of our wayfinding. In surrendering to a quick technological fix, we are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending. I observe this in myself. I don't remember the last time I wrote a single line of code. I'm aware that this reliance on LLMs will atrophy my coding skills. But I was never a great coder to begin with, so I accept this tradeoff in exchange for being able to do much more. It also…