i live by one of the main arteries of the “super-organism” we refer to as technology.

i live by a freeway.

i’ve written a lot of intense and raw thoughts about our inter-relationship of this project that came out of no where.  the ultimate spaceship has become a unique place in the artificial world we call the internet.

i hope with this essay, i can share one more interesting observation i recently made about the world around us and how we perceive and interact with it.  forewarning: it’s 1923 words… not for the meek; if you can’t make the time, you don’t need to delve into this topic.

the question has constantly been there in most of your heads when you read essays like ones posted on this site… “so what are we supposed to do, move to caves and live in nature like animals?”

no.

we are homo sapien sapien.  this is our gift.  we are the privileged species on this rock.

we are the ones who carried the tortures of evolution on our shoulders like every other species competing with us on this planet we call earth, and developed a remarkable skill that they didn’t.

it’s called technology.

technology allowed us to do a remarkable thing.  for a limited amount of time, we have been given access to living without competing in the food chain, sometimes referred to as the tree of life.

given that the macro pressures of life, that is air and water will soon exert themselves on us, we can control one of the holy parts of the trinity of life for carbon based organisms like us… food.

although we currently divert water to provide fresh water to arid areas we choose to populate, water will be the next challenge for homo sapien given our insatiable appetite to grow, I still refer to it as a factor we cannot control because mass desalination to sustain our current population is not a technology we have developed, refined and made readily available yet.

the production of oxygen is also something that we depend on out trusty friends, the plants to do; as they do, ever so diligently… every day.

so food is the one thing we have a grip on. instead of fending for ourselves and taking another animals life with our own claws, or our own teeth, we developed tools to kill flesh and take in the calories.  this same technology soon gave rise to our ability to understand the life cycle of a seed to plant, and cultivate the gift our planet has given us…

we quickly sectioned off pieces of what was once free flowing land, to give rise to another technologic revolution… agriculture.

with our first technologic boom came primitive level of advancement.  the tools that arose from this revolution were simple.  chipped pieces of rock to form sharp edges to kill.

the agricultural revolution (probably single most important revolution in our history) gave rise to more complex tools.  sharp devices to cut the land and sew our seeds, and harvest the bounty of the earth.

as our technologic discoveries ‘expressed’ themselves in our surroundings and made themselves at home in our routines, our big brains did something remarkable.  they didn’t stop like the brains of our close cousins chimpanzees do when they modify stems to harvest termites from their hills.

we kept improving on our technology.

this is what makes you human.

you have the innate ability to look at a problem, and puts things together to solve it.

you have the ability to imagine something, and use your hands to make it.  given the technology that your ancestors created before you; your creative ability increases exponentially.

sharp rocks gave rise to hunting, which eventually gave rise to agriculture, which in turn gave rise to cities, which resulted in cars, which led up to computers, which took us to another planet… our moon.  and now, maybe even beyond.

isn’t that just remarkable.

you should be proud to be chosen as one of the privileged members of this truly beautiful and grand species.

but with great power comes great responsibility.

it is now time for me to pose my observation.

dogs evolved parasitically on us.  even though we feed them, and work to pay for electricity to keep them warm with us at night in our modern, nature proof dwellings, dogs parasitically feed on us.

as a species they have capitalized on a evolutionary beneficial relationship which provides their species with the ability to not have to hunt for food.

before the first “more friendly” wolves were taken in by early humans, we had to fight other animals on our own.  but when we began to observe that a few wolves (one our natural predators) were a little more friendly, and not as instinctually predatory, we were drawn into, what appeared at the time, the mystical an sacred relationship of wolf and man.

but in reality this friendship was really a means that a subspecies of wolf emerged that doesn’t have to fend for itself anymore in the wild and turbulent world of nature.  in return we we able to “domesticate” a well bred machine for fighting off and killing other predatory species.  our early dogs provided their “new pack” the security we needed from other animals (as well as each other… take tribalism for instance).

this process is fascinating and is not an original idea or observation by me.  rather it is my attempt to summarize a series of papers and texts i have recently come across.

i warn you in advance, from here on it gets a little bumpy and bizarre.

technology is another organism, feeding on our big brains.  feeding on our fears.  evolving on the backs of our labors.

look around you.  look at how many things you take for granted that give you life, yet are based on technology.

clean water.
heat.
shelter.
food.
clothing.
shoes.
medicine.
communications.
education.
transportation.

all of it.

in fact, please allow me to extent myself by claiming that i really don’t care who you are and where you are reading this essay… if you are reading it, your entire existence is here because of technology.

we depend on it like a drug to stay alive,  just like dogs depend on their owners to stay alive.

but the message in our dog discussion is that it is the owner who is really the “dog”, who is really the slave.  the dog has evolved on our backs to make us it’s slave.

technology, the “super” organism is evolving on our backs, to make us it’s slave.

we check our watches without thinking what happened that we decided to fragment time into hours, and minutes, and seconds?

we get into our cars to drive a few miles to pick up something to eat (which is ready at any hour now) without thinking that it’s a fraction of what our ancestors walked to get water.

technology is this irresistible drug that has latched on to homo sapien and will soon make us it’s slave.

i postulate this because i watch “us” drive by everyday on the freeway.

and if you just step away for a second and look at the freeway, really look at it, you see and amorphous ocean of metal cells…

moving little organic nuclei around the “city” to do their respective jobs…

just like the silent workers in your arteries, the red blood cells…

the “human-car” cells move along the massive arteries of technology, freeways…

to do their jobs at their destinations, and return home to get replenished, only to go back for another round the next day.

red blood cells.  get oxygen in the lungs, deliver it to the cells; go back to the lungs, and do it all over again.

all this to keep the “super-organism” alive.  in your case, it would be you.  your body, your brain, and everything else that makes up what you identify as “you”.

but does a red blood cell know you exist?  and how many red blood cells come and go before you die?

such is our relationship with this slow growing “super-organism” we call technology.

the final stage of this act however isn’t as rosie as the evolutionary version.

you see, despite her cruel and unusual model of sustainability, nature is actually timid to what possibly awaits us.

intellectuals have pondered what could happen when we continue with our unstoppable desire to create intelligent machines.  the question has been contemplated since the beginning of modern technology… “will machines take over?”

in a way, they already have.  they just haven’t developed an identity yet to come out and say “hello human, how are you today?  i’m fine thank you.”

but that’s only a matter of time.  you can rest easy knowing that there are teams of big brains working for technology, helping it develop this crucial part of continued existence.  just like we checked out of the food chain by discovering the tool and fire, technology will check out of earth and travel the universe.

imagine machines that could repair themselves, don’t depend on oxygen and are powered by the sun… but have intelligence.  they don’t even need consciousness.  one can argue that a cockroach doesn’t have the level of consciousness a human does, yet it strives to survive, at all costs.

wouldn’t that be true for a simple intelligent machine with a program to survive?  this is a prototype, but it’s here, right now…

so what do we do?  i don’t know.

was the mark of the beast our ancestors warned us of in their cryptic and almost fictional parables and holy books referring to technology.  if that’s the case then it might be too late, because almost every human carries a mobile phone.  i spent a month in the remote desolate lands of africa and i saw maasi tribesmen who live in dung huts carrying cell phones.

i came home tonight after seeing the film 127 hours.  i won’t spoil the film for you, but I highly recommend you watch this compelling journey into a mans will to survive and his journey to the inner mind during this moment of truth.

the part that stuck with me was that he is still alive because of technology.  water in a bottle and food wrapped in packaging kept him alive a few more days than he could have lived without it.  and in the ultimate example of irony, he used a multi-tool made by machines to cut his hand off so he had a chance to survive.

once again, technology saved us, even it is by cutting off our hand.

what part of our bodies will we give up next to keep living?  as abstract as it sounds, if we live long enough, this might be a question we might have to answer.

would you “upgrade” your legs to faster, longer lasting robotic ones?  would you replace your eyes for zoom lens, UV and infra-red digital ones?

i know, that’s a little too sci-fi for you… how ‘bout this, would you replace your heart with an advanced mechanical one if you were going to dei from heart failure?

it starts somewhere, but once it does, it’s unstoppable.

thank you for reading.

be kind to your planet.

you’re a member of a very special and rare product of nature.  a species that appreciates art, music, mixing foods, learning the truth behind mysticism, and the most special characteristic of human being…

enjoyment.

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