Technology has (always) been better in the old days

06 May 2078, it’s already 9am when I wake up. Shocking! It’s been awhile since I woke up so late.

But, I had clearly told to my virtual assistant that I wanted to wake up at 6am today. But this jerk, as always, has a good argument: it seems that my vital signs, picked up by just about everything in this house (and in this city), forecast that I should take a rest.

And no matter if I wanted to wake up earlier, the technology took the “initiative” to let me sleep to preserve my health, and sent my hologram to replace me. By the way, my doctor called me as soon as I woke up to tell me that I might get sick in the next few days.

Damn technology!

There was a time when I was considered a techie, a “geek” as they say … I know, it’s so has-been but back then we were on top of the game. Any idiot with glasses wanted to be a geek. But that was ages ago. It was better before.

At that time, technology was still totally under control. If an application said “Hello world”, it was because a human, its master, had programmed it to say so. At that time, we were just starting to deal with artificial intelligence and so on; but the human was still the master of the machine … well, I think.

Today, you are so dumbed down by these pet holograms, by your parallel universe of augmented reality, that you can no longer tell the difference between your real friends and their avatars when you meet them.

An old hologram pet dating from 2018

My son interrupts me : Dad, we haven’t had to leave the house to meet for years, we meet in VR (Virtual Reality). You have to keep up!
Me : You, the young people and your VR! One day, you’re going to lose your mind with all your smart schmilblick.
My son : Dad, these are Oculus.
Me : 😖
My connected blood pressure sensor : 📈

Anyway. I know, we are not yet in 2078. However, it is already the 2078 for someone and we are often not tolerant enough with these people. We are or will be all the “geezers” of one era, as we were all the millenials for an other generation. The world keeps evolving and we all try to keep up, at our own pace. But the next time your grannie ask you to help liking that TikTok tweet you sent out on PubG, just arm yourself with patience and tell yourself it’s like you when you try to knit… You’ve never knitted? Well, at least they’re trying.

Original version in french on 👇

La technologie, c'était mieux avant - @andrinivo