Modern systems never sleep.
They update continuously. They monitor constantly. They respond instantly.
That sounds powerful — but it comes with a cost.
When systems are always on, people feel like they must be as well.
Alerts replace reflection. Dashboards replace intuition. Urgency replaces importance.
Some of the most resilient systems in history were designed with pauses — windows where nothing happened.
As technology removes downtime, we may need to reintroduce it deliberately.
Not everything that can be real-time should be.
That's the idea worth holding onto.