Writelife

As I read Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch I wonder, as I have before, are we making ourselves redundant? By “we,” I mean us. Human beings. As computerization does so many wonderful things for us, one of those wonderful things is the elimination of loads of work. And that’s not quite so wonderful since it means eliminating jobs. When jobs are eliminated, the economy goes in the crapper. When that happens, no one is left to use (meaning “buy”) all those wonderful things … yada yada, blah blah blah.

You’ve heard all that before. But to continue …

While I don’t expect to see it tomorrow, I think we’ll sooner or later develop software that can pretty much replicate human creativity. When that happens, we really will be in the crapper. We’ll have eliminated the last remaining reason for keeping humans around.

You take away creativity and we, as a species, are a pain in the ass. Should they ever get together, perhaps for a three day brainstorming conference, machines and nature are sure to come to the conclusion that everything, and I mean everything, would be better served if humans weren’t around to screw up the works. (Who but a human would drive a Hummer? Would own five houses? Would kill an elephant for the tusk? It’s not like you can eat it.)

Well, that’s the dark view of where we may be headed with our brilliance.

What would the sunny view be?

I should add …

I’ve got loads of technology. I love technology. So the musing above … I’m just wonderin’.

Bookmark to:

Listen to this podcast