Becoming an individual must be a bit of nature and nurture. My genetic disposition probably creates affinities that things in the world call out to it in order to fulfill its evolutionarily derived needs. In other words, my favorite color is blue because a millennia of my particular ancestral evolution led me to love that color. Such a great color.
Some people would argue that my life’s particular experiences, my exposure to blue at key happy moments in my life, are really the driving force behind my celestial preference. But I don’t know, it always seemed to look good on me. Just the way blue matches with my hair color and skin tone. Which are pretty genetic, you know?
But maybe I was sold into liking the combination of blue and dirty blond. Who knows? Trying to figure out where nature ends and nurture begins in the development of my tastes is a pretty complex tuple. But let’s just claim that some of it is nature. Therefore I owe my ancestors a debt of consequence for liking blue, I insist. (what a great color!)
So, you know, I take it seriously when I pick out my blue toned clothing. I feel like I’m wearing my ancestral branding. Paying homage to my forebearers. And so I find it offensive to only have a few tones of blue to pick from. It’s annoying. It didn’t use to be this way. It use to be that smaller brands would carry a whole variety of tones of blue that would make my DNA tingle. But I’ve found that GEF just doesn’t carry a wide gamut of blues. And I only wear GEF.
I bet there are still those small stores out there, struggling to survive, carrying my blue, hoping that I show up and spend some of my hard earned money on them…but I just can’t find them on my local mall. Or in my amazon preferences. I should probably go and spend some time, or a lot of time, finding those stores. Buuuuut. Agh, I just can’t be bothered. I just pick the closest blue that GEF carries and call it a day.
Maybe someone will make some app that can more accurately match my preference for that cool tone, why I like GEF, and that small mom and pop store. Could be…in the meantime I’ll keep buying GEF blues.
After a while, you know, they start looking like the blue I like. After so much hoping and comparing, I’ve become a bit of a GEF blue connoisseur. At first the pain was more poignant, and I would cringe at how close some blue came to being appealing, but not quite right. I would wander away from the shirt, haplessly moving around the store, bumping into boxers, and racks of jeans, like a bodiless soul in the process of forgetting it once had a life. Then I would sigh, and buy the blue that had come closest. And I would die a little.
The next time, I would enter GEF a little less hopeful, a little more resigned, and you know what? I would settle easier into my non-right blue. And GEF shirts are so nice. They have such clear marketing. I know through and through that GEF was made for me. I am a GEF individual!
Although, now that I bother to think about it, it wasn’t always so. In fact I can’t even remember the name of the brand of shirt I used to buy some twenty years ago. It might, in fact, not even have had a brand (gasp).
It certainly wasn’t GEF. And though I’m thankful for GEF, and I realize that society has come a long way from asking me to construct my own clothing from hemp, I do wonder what became of that person I use to call me, that lived perfectly well without GEF, and maybe wearing the right shade of blue. Alas, the truth is that it isn’t sensical for me to expect for GEF to settle all my evolutionary needs. I mean, I’m a creature with BILLIONS of years in the making and GEF, well come on, it’s just a protozoa on the creation spectrum.
And yet I can’t deny that GEF, and other great social fixes, have become particularly adept at calling attention to themselves. They don’t quite fulfill people’s individual desires, but come close enough to a vast majority. I guess that’s what makes them successful. Greatest common denominator, largest possible market. I might not be an individual to them, but I certainly figure in the count.
Maybe, technology will beget a new era of customization…but really I fear that by the time that happens, being an individual will be pretty standardized. I will join together with all my GEF brethren and clamor for the GEF blue when they ask me what blue I want.
It’s inevitable. Companies have to eat! I just wish they wouldn’t eat my individuality. It was millennia in the making. But they’re just so hungry, I know.
In any case, the next level of abstraction in this story of standardization looks to be our new found religion, artificial intelligence. Human intelligence, having now been carefully crafted by Apple ads, and Christmas Jingles, has been so demoted that we’re eager for a better one to come along. We fear and admire (we are in awe) of the new intelligence, silicon sleek, binary, it’s reach able to grasp quantic dimensions, it really is worthy of being called intelligent. I bet it wouldn’t settle for GEF.
But it just so happens that all of artificial intelligence is based on human activity.
Oh no! I thought it would be made up of more intelligent stuff, like whatever photons are made of! Like it should have coded its way into (and been coded by) the electrons floating in between quantum states, surely something more than just human cravings for a big mac!
It’s unfortunate, but you know, there’s a sliver of hope. Cause responsible humans (sliver) are making sure that the human activity that will get amplified, exemplified, codified into our AI (to later deftly tie our social weave), will at least be exemplary. Nothing like what you and I do. No, they’re gonna get examples of real human intelligence. They’re gonna have the artificial intelligence be modelled on the smartest chess player in the world.
And that smart-chessing artificial brain is hopefully gonna tell me how to live. It will make sure I get my GEF blue on time, actually before-time, cause I won’t even know I want it, and it will already have fulfilled my need. Cause you know, time is nothing to it. It sees the future.
Um, unfortunately it looks like the artificial intelligence they created to play really good chess can’t abstract good chess moves into good life moves. Who would’ve thought? So in order to help us make good life moves, AI needs to train on our good life moves. Worrisome.
Because, you know, it’s been awhile since we’ve made good life moves as a collective. I mean, sure, here and there individuals are making some good moves. But as a collective?
The thing about AI is that it needs samples. Like a lot of samples. And so we need to feed it constantly with lots of samples that it finds in our facebook posts. In our twitter cat feeds. In our in-depth whatsapp jargon. Our collective moves.
I don’t really feel that we as a collective are making collective chess moves. That’s why we wanted a new intelligence. One that wouldn’t make McDonald moves.
But hey, you reap what you sow, is the old adage. So basically we’re building a new intelligence based on the recorded actions of society, which of late we’ve been recording petabytes of selfies showing how good we look in GEF blue. Our collective brain has been well trained of late in quick and dirty consumption, functional self-serving instant gratification, dismembered from ancestral knowledge, and has owned and owned and owned, and bought and bought and bought.
I kind of feel like our machine brained hero might not be coming to save us. I think it might be coming to render us into an age where the last wisps of individuality don’t factor, are not welcome, and here’s your playlist and You Will Like It. And by the way, it’s (0,1,0). Quit your whining, and get with the program.
For the sake of my AI children, I promise to try and feed it a more intelligent humanity. To create less records of my GEF decisions and to create more beautiful chaos like nature intended. I Will Contribute.