Make Songs with Robots

Despite all the evidence that we human beings are a miserable, hurtful, hateful, sorry lot, I still celebrate the possibility that we can one day become the glorious, helpful, loving and inspiring species we were meant to be. That in fact, we already are— at least the people that I tend to meet and hang out with. 

 

So my whole life I’ve wondered why we’re hell-bent on replacing ourselves with cold, metallic, screened versions of ourselves. Why we have such disdain for the eloquence of the hand that we are forever dumbing it down, such lack of confidence in our intellectual capacity that we revere Smart-Boards and Smart-phones while creating increasingly dumber human beings, such disrespect for our sensory intelligence that we claim everything we need to know exists on screens devoid of smell, taste, texture. 

 

Here at the South X Southwest Educational Conference I actually went to two heart-warming humanistic sessions taught by live, engaging, interactive and soulful human beings. But to get there, I had to get on an elevator that now doesn’t even let you press the floor buttons inside, replacing it with an oh-so-clever-but-oh-so-unnecessary system of scanning your card outside the elevator, choosing the floor there, being directed to a lettered elevator that then stores the knowledge of which floor you want. I had to walk past a sign inviting me to make songs with robots and another asking me to join their excitement about Artificial Intelligence in education. I had to walk across the street where a self-driving car passed me by. I had a severely depressing conversation about the latest barbarity disguised as progress, the Chat GPT and then that same day, got an e-mail from a friend who had one write his bio. Again, oh so clever, but in the long run, not cool. Why are we in such a mad rush to replace ourselves?

 

A friend went to a session on Alexithimia, a psychological complex characterized by the inability to name or express emotion, to read emotional signals in other people. The next in a line of conditions that we create by living so poorly and then have to deal with the consequences through expensive therapies and drugs. We raise children on appliances and wonder why they can’t “play well with others.” 

 

I’m proud to say that I can name and express emotion and in the face of all the above It is, in short–

WTF???!!!!!!!!