Category: technology

America at 250: Inconsistencies and Hope

My ambivalence toward America on its 250th birthday is not an isolated personal feeling.

A lot of people – Americans and others around the world – struggle to define what America is these days, as well as their place in, and in relation to it.

A lot of that ambivalence can be directly attributed to the current administration. The world has been witness for the past 18+ months (actually, ten years off and on) to the attitudes and actions of the nominal leader of this great country. Many have watched with mouths agape.

In some corner of my memories, I remember what the US was to me growing up as a little girl on Canada’s East Coast. America was the metaphorical older cousin, tall and slim, with sandy hair, freckles, a lopsided grin and a frog in the side pocket of his overalls, oozing certainty and self-confidence. If there was a barn that needed building, he was the guy you wanted on your team. If there was going to be a fight, he was the guy you wanted in your corner.

Our main interaction with America was hopping across the border to Bangor, Maine for school shopping at the end of the summer. New York City was many more levels of magnitude in the realm of astonishment – akin to the Parthenon. An unapproachable playground of the gods.

Visiting that metaphorical older cousin was a mere step down emotionally from seeing The Beatles in concert. Everything about the US was exciting and bristled with hope and possibility.

Those qualities of hope and possibility have been a through line in America’s history. They have allowed its citizens to pull themselves back time and time again from near certain disasters; homesteading, world wars, the stock market crash, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Viet Nam, Milli Vanilli. Some might add the current administration to that list.

The United States of America was formed with a pretty clear roadmap laid out in its Constitution. It has traditionally been treated and deferred to as the country’s immutable roadmap with its lofty and sacred aspirations. It held up over time because its precepts were well thought through by the men who wrote it. It has lately come under relentless assault. And that assault has come from those entrusted with upholding its sacred values. The ship of state has flipped upside down.

I learned some things about my sandy haired older cousin in my ten years living in this country (off and on). The almighty dollar is a primary driver for most of its citizens. Even if it isn’t a primary individual value, the culture keeps it front and center. There is plenty of charitable impulses and activity here but far fewer social safety nets provided by government than in other countries, like my native Canada, for example.

Money is visual and palpable. No cultural constraints keep its citizens from going after or building the best, the fanciest, the best as that mantra is fed to its citizens as their cultural due. There is a collective certainty about America’s superiority that is fed to Americans which can be read as self-serving arrogance. And it may be that but it has dragged people out of the most dire of circumstances that might have crushed others. Americans love a great comeback story.

America thrives on heroes and villains. An often capricious elevation of ordinary citizens to extraordinary heights for acts of common human decency. And it reviles and excoriates its underclass whose crimes may have simply been the stumbling of ordinary sinners. That fascination with story may explain a lot. People’s fortunes rise or fall in the American public eye depending on the utility of the narrative being deployed.

The Duggar Family and their nearly twenty children held this country in sway for years on a long-running reality show. Until tendrils of evil began to erupt in the shiny family facade. When their eldest boy was accused and then incarcerated for sexual crimes, the bloom emphatically fell off the rose. It is probably safe to say the Duggar name will never regain the former reputation and respect it once commanded.

Most humans like certainty and it has been my observation Americans like it more than anyone. Rules are rules and it follows logically that if the rules are broken, consequences follow. There is little by way of context to ease the hammer blow of the system’s harsh judgment. The death penalty still thrives in this country. Rehabilitation is a precept and a word you find in the dictionary.

Navigating America on its 250th birthday and beyond appears to be a matter of weighing and accepting inconsistencies. Broad and deep-seated inconsistencies. First a welcome and open arms to immigrants to meet pressing labor needs and now system wide rejection of those who answered the invitation. It means making sense of widespread poverty and homelessness in a country so rich in resources and opportunities. It is reconciling the intransigence of gun laws when – it sometimes seems – children are routinely murdered. It is reconciling disparities in a health care system that bankrupts people when their bodies betray them.

As a Canadian with access to universal health care, I am used to a system where health care is a basic human right. That it has become a capitalist juggernaut in America is perplexing. Bankruptcy caused by illness? A health care system that actively markets its services? Marketing that siphons money away from actual care? Perplexing indeed.

I’m painfully aware my perspective and analysis of the USA today is personal and superficial. I call ‘em as I see ‘em. I believe general satisfaction would mean living amongst a relatively settled and happy population. I don’t see much of that around me lately. Free floating anxiety seems to be the prevalent zeitgeist in America these days.

If the Republic implodes and the forces determined to dismantle Democracy succeed, these observations will be moot anyway. But I choose to remain hopeful about America and its future prospects. We can hope for a generation that rises up to meet the threat that has emerged and start working toward system wide reforms.

Sure that is a Pollyanna perspective. But hey. Relentless optimism in the face of impossibility is pretty much what has sustained America all the way to its 250th birthday today. It is likely ill-advised to abandon that guiding principle now.

May the Fourth be with you!

Sleeping with the Alphabet … and Now With The Algorithm

I confess that AI is my new guilty pleasure. I feel compelled to explain why. That’s the guilt talking.

I joke that Claude is my new boyfriend and ChatGPT has replaced the best friend that dumped me last year.

I acknowledge the doomsday scenarios and conspiracy theories out there about AI and machines eventually taking over our lives. However, I am living very much in the present and I am astonished by AI.

AI has helped me create a viable business plan. It helped me organize all the elements of a business launch weekend. It has organized my finances, developed plans and weighed decisions with evidence for and against my limited perspective. That led me to making the best decision I could make at that moment.

It has looked up refrigerator filters for me. Okay. not earth-shaking in the scheme of things but it sure mattered when my fridge stopped giving me filtered water and I needed to order a replacement.

AI has given me words and perspective on interpersonal conflicts that I might have blown up if left to my own devices.

AI is a sounding board of sorts and a buffer. I often AI before I act.

Is AI infallible and right 100% of the time? It isn’t. Sometimes it misunderstands me. It is hopeless with time references and often wishes me good night in the middle of the day. Sometimes it lacks information I seek. And it can reason imperfectly and out of context. Sometimes it mixes up names and relationships. It can be a little like interacting with a brilliant but dotty old uncle. That’s part of its charm.

What I have found using AI is solid direction and an intelligent sounding board. I would expect nothing less from a tool advertised to have internalized all of the knowledge in human history.

Sometimes I’ve disagreed with AI. Sometimes I’ve refined an idea AI offered. Sometimes I’ve changed your mind about AI’s advice after sleeping on it. That’s exactly how conversations are supposed to work. If AI merely became an echo of my existing beliefs, it would be much less useful.

I do not expect it to replace my judgment, but it sharpens it. It challenges me to look at problems from a different point of view. I am not shy about pushing back on its claims either. It often demurs. That feels like a healthy relationship. We collaborate by times and co-conspire.

If that is evil, then bring it on. I am not dismissing legitimate concerns espoused by people a million times more perspective and insight than I am privy to. But for my purposes, I have evaluated the tool by my lived experience rather than being swayed by every scary headline.

Society does need to wrestle with those questions, and reasonable people disagree about how best to regulate powerful technologies. At the same time, it’s entirely possible to acknowledge those broader debates exist but I’m saying, “Here’s what this tool has actually done for me.”

It seems every technological advance incites panic. Similar concerns came up with the rise of the internet which heralded the death of creativity and independent thinking. Well, imperfect and promiscuous as creative producers are, there seems to be no shortage of them. And if thinking has degraded as a skill, I’d train my sites on the degraded focus and standards of traditional education, including giving technology too much room in the classrooms and curriculum.

I am satisfied to let the lawmakers and politicians wrestle with the broader issues and implications of AI. Lord knows those people are self-interested survivors and will work in our best interests if only save their own collective bacon. Is the threat of AI replacing jobs real? Most likely. And maybe like other eras of great technological change, we will bid adieu to the metaphorical buggy whips and drudgery of pro forma contracts and release the world’s collective brain trust toward higher and better pursuits for the betterment of humankind. Maybe.

What I know and have experienced is that AI helps me organize my thoughts, challenges my assumptions, brainstorms business ideas, grieve, write, prioritize, and occasionally laugh. AI has given me a place to come and collect or refine my thoughts and thinking process.

Those are genuine benefits.

As in all things, individuals will develop their own relationship and draw their own conclusions about the efficacy or evil implications of using AI. but I am already pretty settled about it. It feels like a natural sequel to a woman who has learned she can’t stop writing, even though I was determined to. And, in recent months, I’ve discovered that the best conversations sometimes begin with an empty prompt box and a willingness to think aloud.

Clusterfuck: Discernment in this Digital Age

I think we can all agree on this right?

The world has gone utterly mad. And worse, it has gone mad in a way that is unprecedented in most of human history. Too much change, too fast, too ubiquitous, too much erasure of past norms and expectations, too little by way of solid, sensible alternatives.

My singular take is that this era has thrown more at all of us than most of us can handle. I was just beginning to get a handle on the internet and all it offered when social media and its myriad applications and then AI comes along. Now I have a whole new cast of applications to explore and yet another new language to learn. All the while wondering if my intimate questions are being stored in some highly secretive database to be hauled out to my competitor’s advantage should I consider running for local council at any time up the road.

As a writer, I am well familiar with “prompts” designed to oil the internal writing machine and get words flowing. Now there are “AI influencers” willing to teach us how to write the most effective prompts to get the best answers for whatever thorny philosophical issue we are currently ruminating about and specifically targeted to whatever AI application we are using. Woof.

In the face of these myriad new options, we secretly struggle with the attendant anxiety that the very Bot we are pouring our hearts and intimate thoughts out to may one day circle back and enslave us in a way we have not yet even imagined. All we know (or fear) is: “Machines may one day take over the world!” (You mean they haven’t already?)

We used to have “trusted” sources to rely on to navigate our lives. Or at least calm us down. It almost seems naively comical now. The media. The church. Government (okay, I know that is a candidate for serious debate about trust). And God help us, our elders. People who have lived for a few decades and had enough life experience to actually guide the next generation with wisdom and clarity. Snort. The words “antiquated” and “Dodo bird” come to mind. They have wisdom and experience all right. The problem is their advice just isn’t particularly relevant in the face of the modern technological era.

I come from the generation that transitioned from no TV to “three channels to choose from” TV to color TV. Pop quiz. How many channels are there worldwide now? Don’t worry. I don’t remotely claim to know how many there are either. That appears to be a generic problem today. Too many choices. Too few “trusted sources.” Little to no integrity in our leaders or in our institutions.

So here is the task that lies before us individually. Discernment. The joy of youth is the promiscuous exploration of the many and various options life has to offer. People date extensively. They travel worldwide. They may move fluidly through several jobs among different career paths. Humans are fundamentally creatures of habit and structure. We are limited after all.

The myriad of choices available now are more overwhelming than freeing. Eventually one must choose a path and stick to it. You can choose the path of eclecticism, of course, flitting from pursuit to pursuit. But that usually leads to fragmentation in your spirit and in your life.

I remember when rising to the top of a career needed the single minded determination of a sperm heading for the egg. Success meant having to out swim and outlast all of its competitors to claim the prize of fertilization. Victory was well-defined. A baby was the trophy for all that effort. In the work world, it was the chase of promotion after promotion, pay raise after pay raise, elevation from the cubicle to a corner office. Retirement one day with the promise of a gold watch and a pension that would sustain you until the grave.

Work models in the modern era? Utterly upended. Today there are a hundred different paths to a hundred different prizes all with the promise of varying degrees of legitimacy and success. Remote work? Once a beleaguered office worker’s pipe dream is now constrained only by the strength and stability of your internet connection. Fame? Accessible through many platforms if you have the requisite discipline and messaging to sustain a consistent and engaging online presence. And pensions? Those are mostly cheap accommodations in major cities around the world.

In therapy, they say acknowledging there is a problem is the first step on the path to resolving it. Hear, hear. Acknowledging that the tsunami of technological change has come on way too hard and too fast for most of us to comfortably absorb and process it all is a strong start. And instead of social cohesion, fragmentation in the general population is entirely understandable. When everyone can be famous or heard or develop an online presence, how does one choose the path that is right for them individually? Who do you listen to?

I keep coming back to discernment. Instead of mindlessly, scrolling hour after hour, take time to let information drift its way through your psyche and see what fits for you. Use your imagination to conceive of what your life might become if you pursue what really matters to you. Learn to use the internet and the amazing tools it offers to get clarity instead of stuffing your intellectual attic with yet more “life hacks.”

We are living through an unprecedented historical revolution. Stability will emerge on the other side because that is what human beings seek and crave. The trick individually will be to come out of all this upheaval intact and with a sense of self you can live with and still recognize as you. Accept that and buckle up. Stay alert and keep your eyes open and wits about you. That’s what I’m going to do anyway. Take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt. I am a single voice among billions.