Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Computers are robbing us of the ability to be human.” This was decades before personal computers, smartphones, Siri and artificial intelligence became a normal part of everyday life. Vonnegut looked into the future and didn’t like what he saw. In his 1979 novel Jailbird Vonnegut dreamed up a megalithic corporation called RAMJAC. In the future, he mused, everything would be a subsidiary of RAMJAC. Hello Amazon.
While I’ll admit to some Luddite tendencies, I wouldn’t say I was anti- technology. It would be pretty difficult if not impossible to exist in the world today without computers, smartphones…etc unless you’re a Buddhist monk living on a mountaintop in Tibet but I suspect that way up there you’d probably get a signal so perhaps even monks have smartphones. The ubiquity of smartphones just blows my mind. Think about it, Steve Jobs and his team at Apple created a product that is the dream and the envy of every company that has ever manufactured a product for consumer use. Current estimates say that 257 million Americans own smartphones, that’s a whopping 81% of the US population! Like it or not, owning a smartphone is an essential part of everyday life.
As for me, I have a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. It has made many aspects of life easier and more convenient for sure. Texting, photos, music, the Internet and the answers to virtually any questions that I have are just a tap away. But smartphones are designed to be addictive and I see signs of that addiction all around me. People’s heads are bowed, their eyes glued to their phones, they are distracted while life goes on around them. I have to make a conscious effort to not be on my phone otherwise like everyone else I get sucked down a rabbit hole that’s difficult to find my way out of. But my iPhone is cool too. My concert, baseball and airline tickets are right there along with all of my photos, contact information and all the music that I could ever want to listen to. It’s disconcerting to depend so heavily on a device that can be so easily lost or stolen. My phone is also a kind of ball-and-chain, an “electroleash” that I find difficult to sever myself from. I often feel like I need to have my phone with me at all times and that is very stressful. I make it a point to sometimes leave my phone at home when I go out. I never look at my phone first thing in the morning and set a time when it goes away at night.
And then there’s artificial intelligence. When considering AI the Vonnegut quote at the beginning of this essay becomes even more prescient. I admit that I know this much (holding my thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart) about AI. Like any new technology I’m sure there’s the potential for good here but seeing where smartphones have taken us so far gives me pause. The fact that AI continues to make jobs that were once done by humans obsolete is very troubling to say the least. I don’t like where this is headed and I don’t think even the people who are developing AI know where it’s headed. The whole thing is scary. Talk about being robbed of the ability to be human!
Another artist who saw the future was Stanley Kubrick. In his epochal 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey we meet HAL a talking computer aboard a spaceship on an interplanetary voyage. HAL eventually runs amok and astronaut Dave is forced to “kill” it. AI will soon be as ubiquitous as smartphones and impossible to “kill”. We all know that the genie is out of the bottle and he ain’t going back inside any time soon.
I look around at the lightning pace of technological advances over the past 20 years and find myself now living in a world that becomes less recognizable every day. Seeking out the low/no tech options in life are what keeps me grounded. Yesterday Carol and I went on a long hike through Armstrong Woods, a densely forested state park about 30 minutes from our house. We walked in silence for hours listening to the rain swollen creeks sing their way down hillsides and craned our necks to look up at towering old growth redwood trees. The air was filled with the heady scents of bay laurel and wet earth. The scream of a red shouldered hawk echoed through the forest while Stellar’s Jays chattered to each other in the treetops. AI and smartphones will never make this experience obsolete.
Lou – I love your writing. Gotta say I don’t believe you could have ‘walked in silence for hours’ though….you wouldn’t be you without your beautiful narrative. Write on.
I’ve just retired from 40 years in tech, pal, and I gotta agree. A couple of points:
I almost never take my phone with me when I go out. I don’t have many apps on it, just weather, email, and – perforce – an app for airline tickets in case I want to visit my sister. Sure there’s music, contacts (like you!), and photos, but I assiduously back these up to my laptop. I boot up that once a week.
Next , AI: presently there’s no actual Artificial Intelligence. It’s Large Language Models all the way down. These are pretty unlikely to become true intelligence via scaling up, which is what the Valley is more invested in right now. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t C-Suites out there wanting to try replacing people with them. They are also already dumbing people down. But the best description I’ve heard of them is an engineer who called them “a stochastic parrot”. More like “Artificial Idiocy.”
Finally, like a lot of stuff these days, a lot of software and hardware is becoming quite crapified. I retired a couple of years ahead of my original schedule because I just couldn’t take the deterioration any more.
And yes, nature is much better, the best antidote. Right now the cedars smell fantastic, after some rain and sparkling in the sun.
Aww love you soooo much Marise!!!! XOXO
Hey, I haven’t commented lately. Too busy on my phone ordering, planning, searching, and connecting. Sometimes, I actually leave my phone at home ON PURPOSE! But when I do, I am always nervous. It is my emergency connection, which is the reason I bought my first one almost 25 years ago. Still, even with it in my pocket, I don’t forget to look up and see nature before me. I will try to do the latter more often. Thanks for the reminder.