Technology Rescue?
In my family we have always invested heavily in technology to help do our work and communicate, so it was really no big hardship when everything closed down around us a few weeks ago. Most of my personal art and graphics work has been done here at home on computer for the last 6 years since I lost my full-time job, (killed off by technology actually), though I will miss hand painting new exhibits at the museum. My wife Lynne has reluctantly closed the museum indefinitely and has become quite concerned that it may not open again for quite some time. She has taken up the slack by moving as much as she can online with songs, stories and activities for the younger ones to do. She holds her staff meetings by video and conducts everything else by email and web calls. My son Rob is a graphic artist and continues to do his wonderful art work at home and my daughter-in-law Courtnee does all of her college work and student teaching and tutoring on line now.
Twenty years ago at the turn of the century, this would have been almost impossible, the internet was still gaining traction and the first smart phones were quite a few years away. Earlier, Star Trek, (1966), and Star Wars, (1977), had given us some interesting glimpses into the future of communication and computing but we were still working things out, wondering what actually was to come. The landmark movie, 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), showed us a lot of technology and computer AI but the reality has still not caught up with the vision. And also, it showed an AI that became murderous, killing off the astronauts on board the ship. In fact most Science Fiction movies of that time showed that artificial intelligence or robots were always the villains. Even episodes of Star Trek, the more positive view of our future, showed us an occasional out of control killer robot or AI.
AI and robots are still in their infancy but are rapidly being pushed into everyday use to help with the current pandemic requirements of not getting together in any kind of group. In fact we may have to rely on things like that more and more in the near future. Pandemics have a habit of hanging around for a year or two and in the future of our warming planet, there may be more outbreaks of similar and deadlier viruses. Humans are a social species and having to separate ourselves will be difficult, and having to rely on machines like AI and robots will take a while to get used to. We already have primed ourselves to having them around in both good and bad ways. (Think C3PO and R2D2 and their opposite, HAL 9000). The reality of it is already here in our internet programs and apps and how we rely on our electronic devices to a huge extent now. The transition to AI and robots may be forced on us sooner then we anticipated by outside pressures. To paraphrase Star Wars, ‘May the Internet be with You, Always.’
(HAL 9000, the AI interface in 2001, A Space Odyssey, sits in the background watching two astronauts discuss turning him off. He wasn’t going to put up with that and decided to run the mission without the carbon-based lifeforms cluttering up the ship. Has Mother Nature decided that she could do better without us cluttering up the planet?)
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