…and what have you done

CV or Eulogy version?

Who and what are you? …so, this is Christmas…and what have you done? Giving or taking, contributing or exploiting?

In “This is for Everyone”, Tim Bernes-Lee recounts his discovery (HTML) that places platform in everyone’s hand, “solidly” and “intentionally” (not just grab everyone’s attention to monetize).

What a romantic and a necessary notion. I love his snippet when Vint Cerf elbowed him: “You are holding up lunch” (Tim’s Turing-Award acceptance speech went a bit overtime).

People do good and do well both at the same time. It doesn’t have to be an either/or zero-sum society. Christmas celebration in Gaza? Yes. The homeless got a meal, the lonely got invited and the orphan found a home (for that matter, a Messiah got a manger).

Abraham obeyed. As a result, we got succession, continuity and lineage down onto David, the King, and from then the Messiah. Sure, the world needs messengers and mouth pieces. It needs thinking soldiers, thinking AI’s and thinking taxpayers. Hey, you spent our public dollars for your own gain (Bag Man).

Three cheers for Mac-Kenzie Scott who gave billions. Our new “civic” trickle-down economy propels the engine of commerce, for continuity and progress.

Medicine-sans-frontiers enables longevity and reduces infant mortality. When they grew up, needing food, education and yes, guidance, we turned away from them, failing to instruct as to what and what not to take (not a knife to kill your parents, a gun to shoot on campus) and how to learn long to eventually draw up somewhat of a CV version on LinkedIn. Be all you can be i.e. honor, decency and loyalty.

From potato chips to graphic design chips, the physical layer (Born to be wired as in Softbank’s data center investment) allows us to thrive by extracting the fruits of bots’ labor, finding answer to the right question, preventive or corrective. Rodin portrays the Thinker; Hopper shows our “Night Hawk”. Aristocrat’s spare time: sitting, sipping and pondering about life, liberty and love. Billions can now afford the fear of missing out thanks to the app layer (private) which built on top of (public) military-industrial-complex funding and university researching.

Will there be light? Necessary for course-correction. Abraham, it’s me.

Let sons, and daughters too (those who got early-childhood vaccines) go to college, gain some knowledge and thrive in the Age of AI. I am old enough to remember the Tylenol scare, the Oil Embargo and the Iranian Hostage crisis, then later Dr Fauci on Nightline, talking about the AID scare. Old enough to remember (even eyewitness) the burning monk and the pissing marine (his excuse to disappear behind the embassy stairs for absolute last chopper exfiltration).

Crises constitute life. All the singing and shooting. Recording and replaying, MP’s and MP3, “so this is Christmas….and what have you done”. In the early 80’s, shooting celebrities was the in thing e.g. Lenon, Reagan and Brady. Today, this has morphed into mass-shooting as cause-célèbres.

Do your part in advancing the race, our human race in view of Big Data. Shame it not and certainly not the One who made you (who live among the wildflowers and in a world which cannot stop talking (TikTok). Come to think of it, one needs a Messiah, more than mouthpieces except for a notable few, Tim Berners-Lee among them, who are lucky to be a byline, a footnote in tech when zooming out – way out.

CV or Eulogy version?