“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” - Wendell Berry
This quote comes L.M Sacasas who also wrote on the topic of Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset:
So, for example, when Berry writes about the division between those who wish to live as creatures and those who wish to live as machines, he also warns against a willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to set the standard for how creatures ought to live. In certain contexts, machines can operate at a pace, scale, precision, and intensity with which creatures cannot compete. When machine-like consistency, efficiency, speed, or production is demanded of creatures, then creatures are made to live as if they were machines. This never ends well for creatures, including human creatures. Most people know this, it’s just that some see this as cause to transcend the human and others see it as cause to re-imagine the human-built world.
There is so much complexity when it comes to tech and community. And it’s not just in relation to the trends of AI and virtual reality.
We can look at the much simpler reality of our recent and current day to day community tech and how people show up with high expectations of the community serving them without ever having contributed something themselves.
Of course, this is is a generalised statement, but is also comes from observations I see time and time again. People don’t give their time to community and then complain that communities are of no value to them.
We’re expecting the tech to solve problems for us now and in the future with AI and virtual reality. I don’t want to live as a machine, I want to place my bets and use my time on technology enabling us to be more human.
Increasingly we have layers. Expression via writing is one. A professional social profile is another. Our very specific releases of specific type of content is another.
I’m not saying this is inauthentic, it’s more that it feels incomplete. We should recognise that and try to find ways to balance our humanity into it all.
🔮 I’m launching a course soon on a topic that I’m deeply fascinated about — Community Discovery.