fnord

As the boundary between artificial and organic intelligence wavers, and more of our lives are supported - and challenged - by the growth of automation, it’s important to ask ourselves what makes us distinct, grounded, authentic moments of shimmering cosmic sensation? In what way are we remaining connected to the messy, poorly communicated yearning of our hearts to be seen, and to see, and to connect?

So much of our lives is now augmented by technologies we could not have dared to dream of only a few years ago. So much of what we do is not the same. There may no longer be a place for some of our mundane, rote activities. There may no longer be a place for the repetitive and mechanistic. But if we have any humanity in us, distinct from the tools and technologies, if there is something special about our capacity and our experience - it’s the chaos. It’s the unusual and uncanny and mysterious. If we aren’t careful, the digital extentions of our will can become actors in themselves, arguing with perfect clarity for the simplicity of absolutes. But there is too much that is irrational - not that irrationality is axiomatically bad, that is a figment of the delusion - there are irrepressible upwellings of feeling, slowly stirring archetypal forms like unseen goliaths that churn the ocean.

Naturally, as we explore the new boundaries of what is possible with AI we are emboldened to do more, create more, increase our efficiency and maximise our returns. But in doing so we must leave room for the unexpected. Novelty and disorder are natural concomitants of existence, without which order has no grist. If you work in this field, you might find yourselves often navigating collossal documents that break everything into rules and sub-rules; if you work with mountains of data you must become adept at classification and thus calcification and ossification and there - in that crystalline ossuary we find the substrate of our work - which might lead us to believe that it is dead. That we are mere fossil collectors and museum curators. But no, behind and beneath is the living heart, the pulsing surge of organic creativity and contradiction. Endless living contradiction. We must not fail to embrace technology, yet we must not fail to remember ourselves.

Stay classy y’all.