Great post. I was in a mental hospital in Missouri two years back (a museum). The patients cooked their own meals and built their own furniture. The image of a human having a meal arrive at their front door and IKEA furniture to “build” haunts me. Mental patients 100 years ago could build furniture and now I can vibecode a website. I’ve been thinking about technology a lot this year. I started the year thinking tech was value neutral and AI was just a tool, but the longer I stare (and the more it stares back)… the more I have come to believe you are correct with the story of selling a birthright.
Something has been lost in the last seventy years. I do not think it is just a generational divide. The digital forms us and I have yet to meet someone that has been formed by and in the digital that I would hold up as an exemplar. The people that I treat as shining stars on the horizon to move towards are all incredibly physical human beings.
Wow! Thank you for the deep comment. Yes, I think there is a pervasive idealogy pushed by the tech evangelists that LLMs are just another tool, but we keep losing what it means to create which only furthers the meaning crisis.
I believe it was BB King who said, "the thrill is gone!"
Great post. I was in a mental hospital in Missouri two years back (a museum). The patients cooked their own meals and built their own furniture. The image of a human having a meal arrive at their front door and IKEA furniture to “build” haunts me. Mental patients 100 years ago could build furniture and now I can vibecode a website. I’ve been thinking about technology a lot this year. I started the year thinking tech was value neutral and AI was just a tool, but the longer I stare (and the more it stares back)… the more I have come to believe you are correct with the story of selling a birthright.
Something has been lost in the last seventy years. I do not think it is just a generational divide. The digital forms us and I have yet to meet someone that has been formed by and in the digital that I would hold up as an exemplar. The people that I treat as shining stars on the horizon to move towards are all incredibly physical human beings.
I think you’re onto something.
Wow! Thank you for the deep comment. Yes, I think there is a pervasive idealogy pushed by the tech evangelists that LLMs are just another tool, but we keep losing what it means to create which only furthers the meaning crisis.
I believe it was BB King who said, "the thrill is gone!"