It’s Been Strange

Sometimes I wonder what makes this time—this particular age of humanity—any different than other periods.  With our own limited-longevity perspectives, it is hard to compare other more distant time periods to our current age.  We only have historical inscribed-stone artifacts or scrolls or ancient tomes to review for that comparison, and since we weren’t around during those specific time periods to personally experience them, it’s hard to truly glean the significance of each era’s actual advancements.

Attention spans are so short these days. The electronic age has ‘instant-ized’ every aspect of our information dispersal; and what was once considered unthinkable, like world-wide face-to-face communication either on your desktop or in the palm of your hand, has become so blasé that we take our “knowing” what’s currently happening on the other side of the world for granted.  There is no time lag between two communicators across thousands of miles of ocean. It’s astounding.

But when we compare humanity’s existence/advancements to all the phases and ages of Earth’s evolvement, we humans are microscopic in that spiral of time. Hominids, bi-pedal human-shaped mammals appeared only 1.5 million years ago, with recognizable ‘humanity’ itself listed as near 200,000 years old.

But the earliest evidence of some type of human community or to a form of human civilization can be traced to only 50,000 years ago. And the larger recognized civilizations like the Egyptians, Chinese, Meso and South Americans, Africans, Indus, Greek and Mesopotamians are only around 6,000 years ago.

The ages of humankind as we know it are based on the tools used to eke out existence in a harsh world geared toward survival of the strongest and smartest among living creatures during each epoch period. So to that end we recognize the advancing ages of human development, such as: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, the current Electronics/Information Age; and we are about to enter the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Age.

What all of these Ages of Humanity have in common is that they aren’t so much a set time period specific as they are collective-consciousness advancement defined. As human consciousness increases, so does the level of faster technical advancement; and as the world population expands, so does the interactivity and sharing of those advancements which leads to ever-faster species’ technical  skills advancement.

Even in my lifetime, (moving from radio) with television to electronics to space exploration to lunar landing to International Space Station to computers to cell phones to heart transplants to joint replacements to DNA genetic modifications to robotic surgeries to Artificial Intelligence to Facetime conferencing with people on the other side of the world; that’s a lot of change in a few decades of existence.  

My dad used to talk about his Ford Model A’s engine that he, a young-buck then, took apart in the morning and had ready to run by afternoon for a date.  My current vehicle is so computerized, it tells me when the air pressure is low on a single tire, and the engine automatically shifts from running on 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders as needed depending on the decreased engine load to save gasoline.  No way could my dad were he alive, or most folks that I know, work on a modern car engine without computer diagnostics and specialized equipment. My vehicle uses synthetic oil—not even a real petroleum product, and electric vehicles are fast replacing gas-burners with every passing year.

All of this advancement in the course of a lifetime is mind-boggling.

So when I lament that “It’s been strange,” trying to gain some perspective on the speed of human consciousness progression in today’s world, I start to wonder what a year from now will be like—or five years—or a decade from this date; and then I wonder more so how the human species will adapt and adjust to its increasing dependence on Artificial Intelligence until AI decides that humans are irrelevant to its most efficient operation and are simply too out-dated to maintain them.

Seriously folks, there may not be another ‘human age’ after that. Pleasant thought isn’t it?