Just Yes or No. Black or White. Heaven or Hell. You get the gist.
No nuances, context, or even human lies (selective memories).
As we grow older, we store more memory. It’s harder to recall a particular incident or name.
Filter it.
Narrow it down, the Search.
Forced choices, alternate only.
When I first arrived to College Campus, not knowing a single soul. Campus Crusade for Christ approached me, at my most vulnerable point of my life. “May we sit down?” they, two of them, Scott and Dean, said. “Sure”, I replied, trying to finish my Whopper (w/out cheese).
Would you like to go to Heaven or Hell? (Bill Bright, their founder, was a Sales man). Alternate choice.
Later, a well-versed in Sales myself, I learned that people tend to gravitate towards choice B, when asked a binary question (close-ended, not open-ended).
I went on to have a bunch of degrees in Communication, Broadcasting, Cross-Cultural communication….you name it.
I even went overseas, to live among different people, of races, classes and cultures. Just to get it down. From person A to person B, without a lot of noise.
Message intended never equals message perceived. Hence, comes the lying, misperception and reading-into the situation. (that’s why palm reading is still around today).
We will never have PERFECT 100 per cent communication break-through. Even among spouses or best of friends. Teachers/students, politicians (esp this type) and constituents.
I don’t even venture to mentioning Priests and Believers….I am in total surprise that after Martin Luther (not Marin Luther King) with his “priesthood of all believers”, we still see priests’ abuse to the degree that the Church has to use its “holy” coiffeurs to settle out of court.
Back to my Barbie World and Binary World. These “damn” machines are learning, while we are sleeping. (So does Henry Kissinger, whose name appears in more recent AI publication along with Eric Schmidt of Google).
It learns how to “auto complete” our thoughts. Our spelling. Our everything.
Binary world. No nuances. No fuzziness. No changing of mind. Of second thought. Second guessing. Or context and cultures. It is all about “quantisation”, of our vocal chords, our biological rhythm. In China, the Machine dictates. Where you can work, what street you can cross (not jay walk – or drunkard’s walk).
In short, enjoy, while it (freedom) lasts. When the machine has done with its learning. Oh my. I am out of here. Back to Barbie’s World. Back to the Jungle Book. Africa is rising anyway (By any and all demographic indications).
In the jungle, nobody knows your name. Just shake the proverbial tree. I am still hanging in there.
But against the machine? I am out.
It remembers. It stores. It recalls. It retrieves….with 99.99999 per cent of accuracy.
Of late, I have done all the ghost work a man my age can muster: cashier (self-checkout), print my boarding pass (and while at it, my luggage tag), reserve my rental, book my hotel, make my own in-room coffee (while still leaving behind a tip for whoever make the bed for the next guest). etc… All started with a self-serve island at the pump (except for New Jersey) – as if it helps reduce gas prices.
Automation. Artificial intelligence. Machine and man, working together. Efficiency.
But….there always is a “but”.
I don’t get to chat (as an extravert, this denial and deprivation is akin to death). I can’t voice up my doubt, my uncertainty and my fear.
Just choose. No room for guess. For ambiguity or ambivalence. Yes or No. Black or White. Left or Right. Heaven or Hell. Heck with this. I am going to bed. Let the machine run and rule the world. Along with dictators and their henchmen. There is a quote:” the world is getting worse, not because of bad actors, but because good men stood by and turned heads”.
Freedom? Democracy? Justice? All Jokes? how about beauty, honesty and truth? Dream and memory. Kindness and compassion? and God forbid, Love and hate, plus a thousand shades in between. (I had my shares of heart breaks, of misreading the body language vs spoken one “If I stayed here just a little bit longer…won’t you listen. to my heart oh my heart”). Want those? Go back to your Barbie World…..and even then, it’s not even safe there. I read yesterday, some guys picked a fight with a muppet on Sesame Street. Saying it’s Korean American. Not White American, hence, not a true one (No wonder, “On Earth, we’re briefly gorgeous”.) He threatened to de-fund PBS. Good luck to land an interview with the Newshour to voice his grievances.
Barbie World is behind us. Binary World, ahead. We are living in a limbo, a purgatory of our own divided making. And I feel both tired and eager to fight for what’s left of what I know the world should and could look like. Well, at least, you may say, as a legacy for my grown daughters. Love them. Will die for them. Any time. (“I am a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world….”).
Thang Nguyen 555 