Old enough to know better, young enough to not care
Technology has always sped us up, but will it change anything else?
Rates of change
When I first got my driver’s license in high school, the world was pre-iPhone. I had gone to the US Cellular in Jay, Maine with my older sister to join her cell phone plan. I ended up paying her $20 per month for my flip phone - with unlimited texting and calling!
At this time, I was chronically online. I had been using the internet for ~8 years or so - from early personal websites (my grandmother had one with a ~ in the URL, believe it or not) to early online gaming (Unreal Tournament) to the burgeoning social media and Web 2.0 platforms of the ’00s.
As a teenager with a car and a phone, I suddenly had many places to go! My parents used to go into AAA to get printed maps for road trips, and they had recently (at this time) started printing out MapQuest directions.
I didn’t want to print things out, partially because our inkjet printer was constantly not working - probably because I had printed out too many stick-on CD labels for the discs I had burned. I found out that Google Maps had a number you could text for FREE directions. You’d text something like “Buckfield, Maine to 1 Main Street, Rumford, Maine”, and you’d receive back a series of texts with step-by-step instructions.
This was a novel application of rapidly advancing technology, but adapted to the real world of the current time. At the time I remember feeling great confidence in my vision of the future. Things I did every day that took me time, would eventually be automated, digitized, and streamlined:
- banking - I used to bring my paycheck to Northeast Bank and deposit it with a written deposit slip. Now, I can send anyone money in seconds.
- scheduling - meetings used to have to be in-person, phone calls were rare. Now, meetings happen virtually is routine.
- music - I had an early DLink mp3 player, and I was confident that one day we’d have music at our fingertips instead of locked into a single, low-capacity format.
Maybe all of this is retrospect in action…clarity through the benefit of old age. I didn’t know WHAT the future would look like, but I did know that the future would be different because of technology.
In my first 37 years, the structure of the world didn’t fundamentally change - but the speed at which we move did.
I cannot help but juxtapose those feelings from my younger years, and the advances that unfolded thereafter, with the AI era of today.
What will AI actually change?
AI helps me move faster, in many aspects of my life.
Those virtual meetings let us cram more collaboration into a month than most people did in a year, in the before times. Is this better? In many respects, I think it is.
I have a hard time thinking that the fundamental structure of the world will change with AI…I think most people would share that view. We’ll still be humans, interacting with other humans (and automated systems).
As I look to the future, I can’t help but wonder how else AI will change my world. Is it just speed? Will there be fundamental changes to society, and how we interact?
At some point, won’t there by an upper bound for what the human brain can understand? Does it even matter if we understand, and can comprehend, what is going on within our worlds?
Young enough to not care
I’ll keep adopting AI to make my world better. However, in some cases AI feels a little bit like texting Google Maps: we’ve built an amazing technology, but we’re spending all of our time adapting it to ways we used to work.
I can’t wait to see if the end result is just speed, or if it is a society-altering outcome. If you’re still young enough to have some confidence in your worldview of the future, I’d love to hear your opinion and shape my own.