So you’ve stepped into a world that’s pretty much a mess. Even worse, you blinked and, suddenly, it became. It seems impossible to keep up, let alone begin to figure out what it is all about. Pick your battles, though, because you cannot possibly cover everything at once.
Technology keeps advancing, at a rate that seems to quicken exponentially. Or maybe merely the releases do. Whatever the case, the world is changing, and that can work in your favor or against you. And you must keep up at least to the extent that it won’t render you obsolete.
But wait! Where is your childlike eagerness to wander off? To be curious about all that the world has to offer? Well, it may still be there, somewhere within you, but with the amount of responsibilities that you currently have, you cannot simply yield to that yearning.
The good news is that, although there is indeed much to get into and grasp, there is also much available that is ready for you to try and utilize. Paths have been paved, mysteries have been solved, cures have been found, monsters have been defeated, and, overall, plenty has already been illuminated.
The problem now, however, is how much of that gets buried under the mess. Misinformation and disinformation run rampant, along with bots, and all the spammers and scammers around that couldn’t give less of a damn. You might have to dig, discern, and become a curator. If not, rely on a trustworthy curator who skillfully does this. But even then, get involved. It is important for you to learn to distinguish between what is true and what is false, what is valuable and what is worthless, and what you just cannot really tell.
AI is practically everywhere, forcing you to recognize that, yes, you have already stepped into a ‘futuristic’ era, as if straight out of a science-fiction movie. And this can be terrifying, to say the least. Photos, sounds, videos, all can be fake, fabrications posing as real humans. Algorithms feeding you content are… questionable. Connected smart devices and robots, pretty much normalized. Money still rules the world and a dangerously high percentage of people are morally bankrupt. Not only that, many even seem to lack the foresight (or care) to see that they’re leading to their own destruction. In that sense, the future doesn’t look too bright.
It can be fun to play with all these modern tools, but at what cost? Many of them weren’t made ethically, disregarding the harm they caused while being built and the harm they can cause you and your surroundings while in use. Until it affects them. And that’s just something to keep in mind so you don’t naively believe that everyone and everything has your best interests at heart. In fact, only a few do.
That said, this is indeed an astonishing time to be alive. Perhaps you are old enough to remember life unplugged. So you get to see the before and after. Quite a significant transition in history, if you ask me. It could be worse; you could be in a period completely devoid of humanity and human progress. And we are not, not yet.
