Lucian Marin
An inexistent future
Lately I keep seeing motivational and futuristic videos. They promote technology as the core of an advancing society, and it almost made me cry to see how untrue this is. Just watch Networked Society’s On the Brink or Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision, then wait a minute and think about it. Is this what we really want from our future?
This future everyone talks about doesn’t really exist — and it never will. It’s just our imagination wanting to do more with fewer possible resources and more technology. But nothing changes: society is and will be the same, no matter how connected or educated we are, no matter how advanced technology becomes. Modern society won’t advance by playing World of Warcraft or by taking online Artificial Intelligence courses from Stanford. It needs an external threat to bring us together, it needs something called “love”, and it needs power to change.
Seeing technology as a threat is not the way. Technology, the Internet, connected devices — these are just tools, tools that have been here for thousands of years. When humanity discovered fire, it didn’t know what to do with it. That’s what technology is today: a sparkle for the future — a future where we need to learn to use intelligent machines for our own good. A future where we give up on wars, where we give up on being divided by cultures and traditions — a future totally different from what we imagine today.