Born of This Time
Right now, at this very moment in time, I am happier and more excited than I have ever been in my life. Drunk on optimism, I dance around like an exultant village idiot. Secure and open in my beliefs in my friends, myself, and the world, I charge blissfully forward.
…So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m in a pretty good mood.
When I was a young man the old adage that “I had been born too late” was my common refrain. I nurtured childish dreams that I might have been a great heroic leader in a bygone era of chivalry and romance. What folly. This is far and away the most exciting and pivotal point in the record of society. We looked at freaking Pluto this week!
But my excitement came a couple hours before, and it was not the result of any extant outside catalyst, but something deep and primal. A confluence. I had been for the past few months consumed with a mildly jarring frequency of energy, a buildup and longing for action, danger, adventure. Many things have gone well the past few weeks, with the company and personally, and this all just flowed into a silky waltzing stream of hope and happiness.
It certainly must be the best of times. Society is morphing into a strange new form as it begins to truly mesh with technology.
We are relearning our past 10,000 years of behavior in a beautiful extension of our humanity.
The troubles of the past few hundred years are mere growing pains as we learn to use our strengthening bodies.
People are developing amazing ideas. I mean, honestly, look!
This is just one guy in the whole blossoming world of deep technological intellect! Everything is about to happen. Someday soon I will take an unmanned aerial transportation vehicle through stacked layers of a now three-dimensional city transit grid. Not bad.
It’d be pretty stupid not to be excited (even if you fear it) about artificial intelligence. I mean, honestly, replicating human consciousness?
Remember that one time we invented that stone wheel? Yeah, cool, we just taught it to understand our dreams and beliefs. nbd.
The advances are not limited to how we interact with each other of course, but we are learning to connect with the world around us as well. One of the bigger tension points in our development, for example, has been our relationship with nature.
Soon the conflict between technology, society, and nature may be resolved, as this Oxford biodiversity and conservation scholar describes in his brilliant Tedx talk.
Most exciting for me, and central to the work I am pursuing with our company, we are learning to apply new interaction patterns and expand the psyche and humanity of society.
This is important.
We are fundamentally altering the way we establish and form relationships and interactions. Some may argue that the new social and commercial networks are merely mapping technology atop previous forms of human behavior. This is incorrect, or rather, too reductionist.
We are integrating technology into the very essence of how we understand each other.
That’s fucking crazy. Pardon the vulgarity, but if you don’t swear now, then when the hell can you? We should all be borderline nauseous over the pace of change and the raw rumbling thrill of it.
So I am looking forward to the world to come. It really gets me going. What a privilege it is for us to be alive to witness it. Indeed, now there feels to be some evolutionary impetus to participate in its advancement. Now is the time for our species to work harder than ever.
…So, I guess what I’m trying to say is let’s go build it.
