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Well, first of all, don’t look at me. I’m writing this in the latest quill pen. Inkwell is also cutting edge. If someone is offering me a mechanical loom that weaves in a new writing cap, I would embrace innovation rather than breaking it with a sledgehammer. You have to move with the times, daddy.
Who am I trying to make a child here? When it comes to fearing technology will appear in Luddite, I will not give to anyone. Even my non-occurrence mother is known to call me “old stone.” But to help with your light, dear reader, let me become a warning story.
Here’s an example of how you don’t do that. For an embarrassingly long, my FT colleagues had to endure seeing me on greyscale on regular video conferences. I don’t know which button I pressed to do this first, but it has been a few months that I can’t solve how to re-enter the world of Technicolor.
Various jokes at my expense assumed I was intentionally trying out the “golden age of the silver screen” look – not innocent, but admitted it was flattering, especially in comparison to the terror of HD that has appeared on television recently. Eventually, I found a route to return after becoming a maroon in the aesthetics of the early 20th century, abandoning my Norma Desmond appearance (“I’m big. That’s a small picture photo”). All of this, I regret regretting the uniformly obvious lack of skinton, but it was good that my incompetent didn’t mention every day after rejoining the rest of the team in full color.
After all, which fear is worse? Are you worried about the malignant gangs of 0S and 1S covering humanity and let us go out of business? Or, for those who keep up with technology development, a more visceral, ancient, and perhaps evolutionary horror of being the object of pity and politics? Once upon a time it may have meant being asked: Why haven’t you made the wheel yet, are you a loser? Now it’s: Why are you there yourself in a dull, slow reality? Come into the world of digital simulation!
No one likes to face a flaw that is familiar with. But sometimes the first set of fear makes me better. Before the final Mission Impossible film came into play, my family revised the entire series. It was the case that Luther, a tech wizard, “defeating me as fierce consent” when he had to deal with the evil “entities” that took over the entire digital realm of the penultimate film. His response was to find a “completely analog-offline safe room” to fight back. simply.
But I also hate feeling left behind. Perhaps the solution is to interact with our old world and to hide in the forest, together with our fun, literate and sociable descendants.
This is far better than waiting to hunt in the online version of “Dark Forest.” Experts warn of “an increasingly hostile space inhabited by predatory bots who grab every creature.”
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But there’s a problem. Should our colonies take the contents of our research library together with us into the wild? More importantly, when our city type needs to increase the persuasiveness of greenery at the feet and solve edible and toxic things, how do we deal with without the plant identification ability of our smartphones when we forage?
Many of us already retreating from digital help would be quite dangerous in terms of creating safe risotto for offline community tables.
As it stands, I’m obsolete by the day due to one female boycott of an endless app, smartphone-enabled everything, digitally created Simulacra. But there may still be time for you – save yourself! Run towards technology and make sure you welcome our new AI overlord.
Miranda Green is FT’s Associate Editor
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