Our accelerated technological advancement since the 1940's has led those of us who have been raised on the promise of a better, more technogically advanced future to believe that there would be no end; that we would continue to innovate and progress and that our capabilities would be a steady rise for generations was a given.
I don't think this is the case.
It seems to me that we may have peaked as a technological society, and there are several indicators that support this suspicion.
Firstly, we have gotten so smart that we have effectively invented something that has the potential, if not yet the capacity, to render us all completely invalid; our creative and artistic pursuits, those "human" things that supposedly we would all be free to pursue in a post-AI world as the machines took care of all the mundate stuff on our behalf - well, there goes that idea. AI thus far has proven itself more than capable of matching - and in some cases, bettering - our own creative endeavours.
I would argue that at this current moment, we mere humans are the ones left handling the mundane.
Secondly, and this may be controversial to some but it's nontheless true, people have become so fucking stupid. We live in a society where every asshole thinks they're special, that they are the main character in this movie of existence, that their opinion - often build upon a foundation of fiction and non-truth - has primacy over all others. People are vapid, self-centered, feather-brained narciccists. Every asshole on social media thinks they're the star of their own imagined reality TV show, that people actually give a crap about their shitty opinions and bad takes.
And this, dear Reader, is where you say:
"Hold up! Aren't you just some asshole venting a shitty opinion?"
And you would be right, in a fashion. But the difference is that I am completely aware of the fact.
There are over eight billion assholes on this rock, and I am but one; I don't even register on the grand scale of existence. Statistical static. And that's just the human assholes. You can bet your bottom dollor, Little Annie, that there are plenty of asshole ants, and spiders, and woodlice, and birds, and lions, and every other asshole species. Maybe being an asshole isn't a reserved characteristic of human beings. Maybe it's a universal truth amongst all lifeforms.
That little amoeba floating in your glass of water, blissfully unaware of wider existence? Asshole.
How about the little mite who has been living quietly in your living room carpet for months, greedily gobbling up your dead skin? Yup, that guy's an asshole too.
And all of use already know that all wasps are assholes.
I suppose the fundamental point I am trying to make, in my ever-increasingly disjointed and rambling way, is that we are all assholes. And while I'm beginning to believe we may have peaked in our capacity for technological evolution, I don't apply that belief to our capacity for being assholes; that, dear Reader, is indeed limitless.
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