As we watch an advertisement for a Bespoke AI Washer and Dryer that can receive phone calls and open its door automatically, I realize that I really, really don’t want to Live in this world. I have huge sympathy for my mom as she does battle with her iPhone and online billing, because today I broke my email and my phone can only find the right “Dave Eisner” on good days, so I have to find one of his calls and call him back because – who knows why… I can’t stop the flood of AI-slop on YouTube and my phone is flooded with scam texts and I don’t know what quotes on Instagram are actual screen caps and which are made up and I’m not following Trump to fact check it.
There are clearly people doing stunning things with the technologies around us. Andor looks as real as any on-location feature film. Home recording is truly able to do anything any big recording studio can. My phone can translate handwriting better than I can and I can clean up 10-year-old videos of my photo teacher speaking to a crowded, noisy room with just a couple of knob tweaks. The above on-location feature films can be shot by $10,000 cameras or $1500 iPhones and come across as equally professional.
But the world really is just absolute chaos as people choose what they want to believe and America’s ideals collapse. When BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is being attacked by the President of the United States, you know something is severely wrong.
It’s the next morning and the cat lounges as Kristen and I listen to our niece’s commencement speech. The cat gets up and causes mischief as his morning routine is disrupted. He expects to lounge on Kristen for a good hour or so in the morning, but we’re downstairs making breakfast, so he’s climbing on things and flopping and poking into the closets and generally expressing his dissatisfaction.
The speech pushes forward expressing admiration for empathy and fortitude. “Go change the WORLD!” is met with applause and cheers and I hope these kids are believing it. She’s talking about success and failure, and pushing forward after failure, but almost as important, pushing forward after success, because if you’re doing it for awards or grades or applause or gold stars, the moment you graduate college the world changes dramatically. No longer getting told “good job” by anyone paid to do so, you’re about to be forcibly submerged into a world where self-drive is a must, and that self-drive has to go long, long, long stints between any kind of exterior refueling. At least social media will be there to let you know when you’re failing.
“Taking from others does not improve our Lives” is a great statement, but it’s not true. The reflection – that we CAN improve our Lives with OUT taking from others – is also true, and if we can improve our Lives without a negative impact on others, why wouldn’t we? But it’s harder to prove, and antithetical to core competitive capitalist theories. You’ve GOT to take because everything is land.
That’s so 20th century.
Now, you’ve got to GIVE cause everything is SERVICE.
It’s time to function.