Reflection: Can We Retain Our Humanity in This Increasingly Automated Digital World?

I know it's a stereotype, but at the same time I have actually witnessed this particular stereotype in action when I watch a group of five local high schoolers sitting at the table at our local Subway sandwich shop all busily texting — each other? — on their phones rather than talking to each other.

Over the years, I've touched on the ”Large Arc” topic of how the Internet and the e-mail allegedly opened up whole new worlds of communication for all of us. And yet, people feel more and more isolated and removed from each other, as compared to even 30 to 40 years ago.

Our humanity slowly goes down the drain a little bit at a time, as everything around us becomes increasingly automated. I go to my local supermarket and buy a basket full of things that I now check out myself and I actually have no direct interaction with another human being in spite of the fact that I am in a busy store filled with human beings.

The other day, I needed to order a refill for our large outdoor liquid propane tank and the whole process took place via an automated phone call. I didn't even talk to another human being. Meanwhile, we no longer have to go into a bank to do our banking, and we no longer have to go to a shop to do our shopping — Amazon will have it at our front door tomorrow morning, if not later the same day — and no matter where we turn we are increasingly being removed from even the possibility of connecting with each other.

I even overhear older gamers complaining about how their chosen games no longer are about the skills of "on person against another" but about "botnets playing against botnets."

Ironically, even such ideas as deliberately connecting with others has become an automated process primarily transacted through online dating services, where everything is presorted and choices are made based on only the most superficial of attributes... and who even knows whether our choices are based on reality or on Photoshop?

I always like to think that I brought a little bit of humanness to my online activities by writing largely personal commentary style blogs as opposed to more neutral and impersonal things like instruction manuals and guidebooks and so forth. After all, in this day and age, we barely know whether such instructions were written by AI or by a human being!

Which brings me to the conundrum that we are so worried about: the rise of AI and how AI might take over the world with ill intent, even while every system we put in place seems designed to remove the human element, thereby bringing into reality the very thing we're afraid of: that we are no longer needed.

And what do you do, when something is no longer needed?

”I’m training my replacement, and my replacement is a robot…”

Well, one rather gloomy bit of information might be extrapolated from looking at the fact that around 1910-20 there were some 25,000,000 horses, mules and donkeys in the United States right around the time when the automobile was about to become mass-market popular, and that number had dropped to fewer than 3,000,000 by 1960. For comparison, there were about 92 million people in the US in 1910, compared to 179 million by 1960.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that humans are horses, just looking at a particular population that was replaced by a form of automation, and looking at the subsequent population change as a result.

Still, it offers up a plausible answer for why the whole New World Order cabal might think that the earth is "overpopulated."

Meanwhile, I am just trying to maintain my humanity by doing things that are distinctly analog and refusing — even if it is somewhat to my detriment — to automate every aspect of my life with the latest iteration of new technology.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, or just worrying too much, and it does seem unlikely that I'm going to be entirely replaced by machinery during my lifetime — I am 64, after all — so I'm really more concerned for our daughter’s unborn son who likely will be facing a completely different situation by the time he reaches the age of 64.

I suppose these worries are not entirely new. Even when I was working in the IT industry in the 1990s, we often had discussions about whether the technology was really serving us, or we were bending ourselves to serve the (then) constraints of the technology. ”We need people to use the computer this-and-that way, because otherwise the computer won't work reliably.” Yes, that was an actual conversation I witnessed during a planning meeting...

It was not long after that that I got out of that particular industry permanently.

Regardless, I am not quite ready to give up my humanity, yet... so I'm going to finish proofing this post and adding photos, and then I'm going to head outside and cut come firewood!

By hand...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your day!

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Created at 2025.01.16 14:03 PST
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