Words&Dirt

“Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don’t want to go. The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa’s table: ‘What has become of the dreams of our youth?’ they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. ‘Those years are long gone, and life’s a bitch.’ I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.”

––The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, pg. 22

“The new anxiety about AI-based automation and the resulting job loss may eventually prove well founded, but it is just as likely that those who are alarmed have in fact just latched onto the right backward-facing snapshots. If the equation is framed in terms of artificial intelligence–oriented technologies versus those oriented toward augmenting humans, there is hope that humans still retain an unbounded ability to both entertain and employ themselves doing something marketable and useful.

If the humans are wrong, however, 2045 could be a tough year for the human race.

Or it could mark the arrival of a technological paradise.

Or both.”

––Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, by John Markoff, pg. 84