I like to automate. When I hit a problem with timing or effort, the question becomes: “Can I automate that? Can I make technology do that for me?” I am a transhumanist: it’s not odd I think that way, but what is funny is how often the answer is a resounding YES to those questions.
I guess the world is catching up to the proposed futures of the past. Smart plugs make my light turn on by my schedule. My scale records my weight for me. If I can make something give alerts or similar when events occur, then I am all for it.
Now, you might call me lazy. You might call me spoiled. You’re right on the first one, possibly right on the second. After all, I am a white male, cis-gendered, heterosexual living in America (also a little left-leaning, if you could not tell from that tongue twister), so I get access to some of the best stuff in the world—and I can get it delivered to my door.
And that’s spoiled.
That’s lazy.
It’s also the future. I’m not using all the free time I get to binge-watch Netflix or eat a pile of ice-cream the size of my head.
I’m walking, exercising, writing, getting shit done. Some people are all hand-wringing and worried about what technology is doing to our humanity. That it’s sapping it away. And, maybe, in a vacuum, it is. But two things: one, I think being a cyborg is cool—I already wear glasses and a smartwatch and wireless headphones. And, two, that’s really belittling people, don’t you think?
Yeah, we can order shit and we don’t have to talk to people in person—but we do anyway.
Edge cases exist sure, of people dying not moving from a screen. I’m pretty sure people at all points in history did dumb stuff like that. How many perished away in ancient opioid dens? In most cases, all this free time and labor-saving let us be more ourselves. Not less. All this new technology lets us make, experience, and learn more. Connect to vastly more.
As I said, I’m a transhumanist, and I think the human species is evolving through tech. Environment shapes organic development and we shape the environment now. We’re the species that can do it. If you think that’s unholy, unnatural, then live in the foliage, my friend. Someone needs to take care of the trees.
And while you do that, I’ll be slowly working toward a world that hardly needs any paper.
So, yeah, I automate stuff, and I mean this next assertion in as entitled a way as possible: I am a member of too advanced of a species to fucking worry about whether I left the light on in my room.
And you are too.
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Coolerbs Writes 