The Centennial Man can’t cry. He just lives on, doing the work of ten men efficiently: shooting the Tylenol capsules down the missiles, or dropping the A-bomb on the millions. It’s the age of technological gods, whom “behind you, I can see the millions”. In place of “soulful” “see me, feel me, touch me, heal me”, we found pure efficiency. Instead of The Who, we have the What; instead of melancholic Turk, we have Mechanical Turk. Or to compromise, we invent collaborative robots, working side by side with human: the cobots.
Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and legend had it that he, as a toddler, unscrewed his crib just to see how things work. Later, he said he enjoyed reading “the Remains of the Day”, among the many books Amazon ship out. Amazon recently. announced its 2nd US HQ (NE to load-balance out NW). Strategic and again efficient (for AWS and follow-the-sun Prime shipping).
What’s in those packages? books? music? movies? disks? Are they “soulful”, engaging and relevant? Do they move you? Already news and boobs are fake. How can we be sure that next generation will ever see the likes of Marvin Gaye, Todd Rundgren and Neil Young ( “I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood… looking for a heart of gold, and I am gettin old”).
Instead of serenading the moon, we are into Moonshots, and in place of arts, asteroids.
Cry, my beloved co-opters. It’s time to leave: the house for Airbnb, the car for Uber and the computer for AWS. When someone or something can do it better, it’s time to leave.
Well, except the crying part, the facial expressions (until emoticons catch on). I often admire old and elegant actors and survivors of Hollywood, Anthony Hopkins for one, who take their time after someone yells “action” to step into someone else’s shoes.
Modernity has cast the die and written the script. That script is to scale, to move the mass and to organize the world, efficiently. Google took off its early days’ motto “Do no evil”. In its place, we found a void on android. Someday Amazon might end up shipping a box of tears, from human to human, the same way Netflix founder tested the USPS to see if his mail-delivered DVD would arrive as anticipated. It will be our digital “message in the bottle”.
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me. I am glad Tina Turner said what she said ” I have done this song – Proud Mary – a thousand times. But each time, it’s different”. It’s not only content – which machine can learn – but that “strange vibration” which stirs and moves us, collectively.
Behind you, I can see the millions.
Thang Nguyen 555 