Are we cursed by our technology?

Humans are controlling creatures. 

All of our modern civilization is built around control. Cities, streets and people have names, categories and labels. This helps us venture out and find where we are.

Dates and times tell us when we are. “Make a reservation for next week!” “Last century was so last century.”

Anything we can see, touch and feel (but also not see, touch or feel) must be defined, understood and reproduced. 

Humans love to control, because it provides us with a feeling of security. 

That feeling is strong, we want it on repeat over and over. We pursue security by inventing tools, systems and rules to control the controls. 

Without security a haunting fear sets in. Afraid we bend or eliminate the unknown to fit into our understanding. Sometimes it’s an extraneous sentence, other times it's other people.

But then there’s that human duality. 

The moment everything is under control we start asking more questions. We defy the existing understanding because that’s our right and the second defining feature of human nature.

Humans are as curious as controlling. 

Well fed, inside his home by the window, surrounded by three children, a man is bored. Staring at the night sky he wonders why it is dotted so brightly. Look, you and I know its stars, galaxies, and other space wonders, but he doesn’t. He’s been told it's a bunch of deities and later on not to worry about the sky too much or else. But he’s restless. Sweating. The man hacks the hottest invention, the telescope. Through the enhanced lenses he observes the sky, scribbles down a few notes and eventually tells everyone that those are stars, sort of like our sun. As a consequence he of course goes straight to jail, therefore missing Galileo Jr’s birthday.

Humanity is defined by its needs such as security and curiosity. We naturally use technology to fulfill our needs. Inventing and crafting is our extension as much as our ability to walk, speak, and dance.

"Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it … without proper consideration for human welfare, technology becomes a curse to mankind."
- Albert Einstein, 1931

“A curse to mankind”

Curse is a superpower that at the most unfortunate time turns on its owner. It’s also my top 3 favorite melodramatic device (ask me for the other two). 

Midas whose touch turned everything into gold, until he realized he gave up human pleasures.

Daedalus whose ingenuity gave Icarus flight but whose ambition caused his demise. 

Today humanity is benefiting from the same superpowers:

• miraculous cures for deadly diseases by splitting genetic code 
• ammonia fertilizers saving one third of the world population from famine
• travel distances through land, sea and air(!) shortened by months 
• all human knowledge accessible anywhere instantly
• labor done by self-maintaining machines

But what is taken away from us when human knowledge, intelligence, and labor is reliant on technology? 

People of 2027 fear our reliance on technological superpowers is a Faustian bargain.

In current terms that AI will turn sentient and do with humanity as it pleases: collapses infrastructure, capital and policy systems followed by a violent finale.  

Humanity would not perish if the next Thursday electricity, clean water, and heat suddenly stopped. If banks ran out of money. Our planes stopped flying and roads crumbled.

We would use guns until the bullets ran out, then throw spears. First at the animals, then at each other. We’d reinvent what we need and live again as one with nature.   

Mankind does not rely on technology. If anything mankind really relies on nature. Giving us food, water, and at the top of the list the air to breathe.

The much better thought experiment is to ask: “What if nature is just technology?”

Nature as technology

Nature is the master of self-balancing acts. It’s omnipresent by the virtue of being composed all there is. Without malice nature takes where it needs and creates somewhere else.

Maybe today’s technology is a glimpse at humans re-inventing nature. 

The Internet is our collective hive mind. AI is our ability to process it. Singularity is our next step to become one with nature. 

Perhaps humanity, defined by its unsatiated curiosity and need to control, is at its toddler age learning how to walk, still going through our emotional and social development.

Like any 3-year old we are about to learn how to share with others. The lesson today is to leave something behind to receive something in return. 

While it’s scary, I’m curious and hopeful we’ll all receive a gift. 

“It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.”

― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945