Hurtling into posthumanism

Radical environmentalist and anarchist Edward Abbey enjoys a cigar next to his Royal KMG in this photo shared with me by Chris Osmond. I note a painting of Don Quixote over the typewriter.

Whatever you may think of Abbey's ideas, he spent year after year typing them on this machine that required no electricity but invited his brainpower. And he was a human being.

Now where are we going?

On May 18, the Chicago Sun-Times published this list of reading recommendations.

The novels sound great. Only problem: the first ten of them don't exist. At least, they didn't on May 18. I bet that since then, people have prompted AI to generate them, as it generated this list.

Meanwhile, I was shown this ad on Instagram.

What is saddest? That we are suffering from a loneliness epidemic? That the creators expect us to be so gullible that we will be consoled by a "90% Human-like" simulacrum? Or that, perhaps, they are right?

We seem to be hurtling into a world where human effort and imagination no longer make any difference, where what matters is how machines calculate patterns in the massive stock of recorded information. It will require trillions of dollars and countless gigawatts, but those with the money and power are sure that it is the inevitable next step. Edward Abbey is rolling in his grave.

But I am sure of one thing: not everyone wants this future. This semester, most of my students chose to write their daily reflections by hand. The four young women at one table all told me that they use flip phones. A quixotic insurgency is afoot. One form it can take is sitting at our typewriters, drawing on our own memories and thoughts, creating ... and connecting with like-minded humans who reject the authority of our powerful, yet mindless new overlords.