Like I said last week, humans are pretty darn smart.
It’s our big brains that give us all the advantages over the other lowly creatures on the planet.
Those guys are still out there in the wild, chasing down dinner – or running to not BE dinner! And, unless they have the capacity to find or make shelter, they’re likely sleeping in all kinds of inclement weather. It’s one thing to sleep through a rainstorm, but it’s a whole different experience to sleep IN a rainstorm!
But not us big brained homo sapiens … most of us are all tucked away safe and warm in our cozy houses, in our safe neighborhoods, clustered all together in the large important cities we built …
**NOTE: Of course there are millions of our fellow homo sapiens who don’t live such cozy lives … but remember, we’re talking brains here, not hearts! That’s another blog for another day ...**
So we sit in our comfy abodes, munching on our delivered dinner, entertaining ourselves with our amazing technology, all while feeling rather smug and proud of ourselves, because WE did all that! But there’s always a dark side to the good things we do …
We invented all kinds of cool gadgets to make our lives easier and better … cars, refrigerators, cameras, TV dinners!
Then we found out that those things can be monetized, and we can get make a living off that. Well that’s pretty cool, except for the folks out there who would benefit, but are priced out of attaining.
So ... have we now invented a class system of the haves and have nots? Or is it a new opportunity to lift us up through job opportunities and learning new skills?
Those cameras we made are pretty cool … we can take pictures of rocks on Mars or study a far away solar system or capture an image of the license plate of a criminal fleeing a crime scene.
Is the TV we’re watching looking back at us?
Let’s add a microphone to the camera. Now we’re suspicious …
Did my phone just overhear a family discussion about our dying furnace? 'Cause now I’m getting all these pop-up ads about local stores and repair shops.
That’s because we invented the internet. So now we have a place to show off our inventions and sell them to everybody else. It’s where we go to get our entertainment … hey, maybe it’d be a good place to have some discussions about all this crazy stuff that’s going on …
But mostly, when we get onto the internet and social media, we’re just barking our opinions at each other. There’s some good and useful stuff there for sure, but there’s also a lot of nonsense and vitriol getting spewed.
We get so carried away with getting our own selves and points of view out there, that we really don’t listen to each other. If we do listen, it’s usually just someone else we agree with, and not the opposing side. The opposing side doesn't listen so well, because they're just yelling at us. And that's fine, 'cause we started yelling at them first.
And now we’ve really outdone ourselves … AI is here!!
It’s useful, for sure, But now we can’t be sure if we’re talking to a real human or a machine. Are the graphics and the content we’re viewing man-made or machine-made?
Help! We need our big brains to sort all this out! You know, those EVOLVED big brains we’re so proud of … those brains that are supposed to help us navigate through this mess we’ve created …
So we run back to our man-made source of all of life’s answers – social media – to find the answers to our desperate questions.
And what do we find ... FLAT EARTHERS!!
Some of the brains in our collective are EVOLVING. But apparently we have sectors in our collective with brains that are DE-VOLVING.
For any old-timers out there who might remember newspaper comics, my favorite Pogo quip: “We have met the enemy, and he is US!”
Ain’t it the truth.