I am the type to break my back to see you break a smile.
Let’s talk about end-all projects. In the scales of character extremes, such as tough and soft, logical-emotional, quiet and extroverted, schizophrenic and autistic, there is one scale that engineers usually fall victim to tipping all the way over to the right on, resulting in a never-ending spiral of science, startups, research and development. This is the cross-section between creativity and logic, which fuses into innovation.
This is a dangerous place to be because logic will never tell you to get out. After all, you’re helping humanity, making money and stimulating your mind. What could be better?
The engineers I met get into science either by parental pressure or because they need to save the world. I’m not exaggerating. Underneath the practical outer layer of most engineers is an equally disconnected-from-their-true-self hidden outer layer that has chosen some science fiction-style invention to be their life’s purpose. I’ve heard it all. You heard of Google’s singularity and Elon’s Mars goals? It’s along those lines. No more computers at work. Warp drive. The microplastics be gone. Endless energy Fusion/fission generators. The end of global warming. The genetic modification of a fully-fledged human into a new super-species-animal hybrid. The warp drive. A borderless world of blimp space elevators. (I’m a victim too, obvious by my previous posts.) They start by saying something capitalistically plausible. Not genetically modifying humans into super-beings, but curing genetic disorders. I went through my CRISPR phase in high school. I went through a lot of End All Project phases. The environment of innovatively stuck people is a caustic one because they’ll end up at a robotics company, like NASA or SpaceX, and spend their days integrating various existing technologies, which is about as fun as assembling IKEA furniture, at least to an End All Project mind. Hence a lot of unhappy people being forced to see each other every day.
It’s okay. Have another drink. Tell me all about how no one will ever have to drive again, go to school again, cook again. I’m here for it. Let it out.
AI has slipped its way into every End All Project as a way to offload thought. You can be the one to suffer over these topics, live on this infinite loop. Not me.
Their End All Projects may very well end up happening with or without them. What’s more odd is the double life they lead. The tunnel vision. The masochism. The ceaseless pride that they’re intelligent enough to hide, and usually hide well.
Said with murmurs of anthropological discoveries a lot girl tried to report her findings: If you could see the underworkings of common tech, you’d see it’s easy to understand. The hardest part is memorizing where all the buttons are. The buttons on fully fledged designs that somebody else arbitrarily picked as ergonomic that I don’t find ergonomic at all because I rather lay in the floor than sit at a desk. Then the language. They mostly speak in acronyms, and they assume you understand what all of them mean.
I’m pulling myself out of the innovative far right. More emotion. More pragmatism. Crazy. Dealing with addicts is an interesting altruism.
Whispers: Our manufacturing abilities don’t mix well with innovation.
Whispers quieter: Bureaucracy and regulation systems don’t encourage innovation. Murmur, murmur.
Haunted whispers with no eye contact: Leaving this means falling from grace. Where do we go? The impulse to start making software still overtakes me. It’s lonely amongst mortals. The only path left is to mock it. Break the collective culture with humor. Is even that too ambitious, too “innovative”? What if I can think about it for only 20 minutes? Release my hypocrisy-exposing ideas into the world before noon via internet. Ignore it, then have it catch fire by night. Warp drive in a day. Warp drive through meme.
Anthropological Magical Realism 