You Should be PISSED.

 

There is a movement that’s been going on for probably a lot longer than anyone can imagine. The movement is toward ease, comfort, convenience, and in the end compromise of civil liberties.  And you should be PISSED. 

There is a significant portion of the population who (tin-hat crazy as it sounds) fears the rising sentience of their AI and subsequent takeover of the world by “those damn robots”. I’m of the opinion that it’ll always be the people behind the robots and not the AI at all.  Unfortunately, our own complacence and enthusiasm for comfort feeds the beast, and I do love me my laptop and phone!

When was the last time you paid an actual bill with an actual check with full intentions of continuing such action and not rushing immediately to your online banking app to set up auto pay, ehh?

Greed on the side of big businesses and complacency on the side of the population at large are the pusher of intelligent AI. Look at this fight between Adobe and Pantone, or this article on AI in Hollywood. Small time artists, educators, writers, plebes and the printers are the ones who suffer (until shining knights like Freetone  and Edward Tian step in).

Greed and complacency don’t have have to be such negative sounding things, you’re likely thinking. Surely! Lots of good has come from this easier, physically safer, more convenient way of life. I’m just saying, be aware of what you’re giving up in exchange. Be mad at the Big Players, not that guy in the middle row on a long-haul flight with the exceptionally long legs. Was he too big, or was the plane seat too small - think about that for a sec. Another topic - Airlines and other Big Boys Clubs, coming soon...

Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk - They are not the be-all-end-all. Someone is going to come along and do their jobs better, faster, stronger, and sneakier! Tech costs in general tend to go down as the technology becomes more common, or so we would like to think, but think about this. The huge amount of money we now spend on tech on top of the huge amount of inflation and huge costs of college that is now normalized, something new will become a necessity. 

Compare what we spend on tech today to 1980 till about 1995 when trade school was an actual valid and pride-filled choice for a kid, and you maybe had a home computer and cable. Use this inflation calculator to plug in a comfortable income then play with flip-flopping the dates - It's sobering.

This “easy” life we live comes at a heavy financial, psychological, and emotional cost. Is it any wonder that some of us feel anxious and stressed constantly and really have a hard time putting a finger on what exactly it is when simply everything is wound so tightly and then normalized? 

 

Maybe try balancing your checkbook by hand once in a while, just for the satisfaction of knowing you're doing something to your bank honest, or get a land line and hold off buying the kids phones for a few more years (bonus: their friends have to call the house and talk to you!), or cut it down to one tablet and don't attach it to a phone line. Sometimes working a little harder saves us a little in the end (both financially and as human beings).