Every technology, at a fundamental level, is about resource exploitation. Technology either opens up new resources to be exploited — for example, when steam power gave us a use for coal — or finds new, more valuable ways to use the resources we’re already exploiting.

Consumer internet technologies — Google search, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. — is very cheap in terms of physical resources. In fact, that’s why people’s shift toward online socialization has been great for dematerialization of growth, and has taken a lot of pressure off of the planet. But there is one fundamental natural resource that these technologies use a lot of, and that’s time.