We all do it. These goddamn phones seem to have been invented for it. Emails, texts, social media, porn, “news,” games; the second your mind wanders, just grab your distraction machine and dive in.
Don’t get me wrong, all of these things can serve legitimate needs, but Christ – does it have to be this easy?
Maybe an unadvertised feature is the requirement to develop some discipline and self-control.
Fumbling in the dark here, looking for the way out. These things are never lit up the way you want them to.
I know it’s around here somewhere.
Go deep with the shit you love. Wear it on your sleeve with pride. Write a fucking thesis on it.
This is one of the pleasures of being alive. You get to experience the world in a visceral way, taking pleasure in how it changes you, marveling at the amazing coolness of whatever.
What we’re talking about here is the fundamental principle of consciousness. The subjective experience of living.
The act of being delighted and obsessed with dumb shit, or rather, finding meaning where no one else sees it.
When you find it, make sure you let everyone else know. If nothing else your enthusiasm may inspire them to look for their own magic.
Let’s start from the assumption that feedback loops created by human input into social media platforms has gotten away from us. Big time.
Even the software engineers that created these algorithms admit that controlling these networks has become impossible. At least by humans.
Just for fun, let’s also assume that everything happening now is an inevitable component of evolution. So we’ve created something that has gotten away from us, and it’s destructive for our survival. Evolution would dictate that, as a species, we evolve a solution.
Well, if the problem is already bigger than we can control, perhaps we might evolve a solution that can handle it.
Maybe that solution is AI. Maybe we have begun to evolve the very thing that will save us. But if it’s part of human evolution and yet non-organic, how would that work?
It doesn’t remain separate, that’s how. It evolves to become us, and we evolve to become it.
Just spit-balling here, folks. I’m a fiction writer. This is what I do.
Apparently, I not only won a Pushcart Prize, I was also nominated for a National Book Award and chosen for The Best American Short Stories Anthology. At least according to Bard, Googles Chat GPT. I found out by asking it, “Who is David Thomas Peacock?”
If only I’d known, I would have asked sooner.
Sadly, it’s yet another disappointment that I can’t seem to find them. Anywhere. I don’t even remember winning them (except maybe in my dreams).
Oh well. On the plus side, I’m also 12 years younger than I thought.
So there’s that.
In 2013, Lou Reed died. It was late October. The last thing he asked for was to be taken outside, into the light. His wife Laurie Anderson was by his side.
“I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou’s as he died,” she wrote afterward. “His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn’t afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life — so beautiful, painful and dazzling — does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”
