There’s a nihilism of our current era. In the great media age, the volume of ideas has not become the empowering tool of higher understanding the tech gurus of the aughts predicted. Rather than the betterment of humankind, the internet has delved into the worst human instincts. How many untold hours have you wasted doomscrolling, commenting, and/ or dissociating, phone in hand, mind checked out? I can answer for myself. I could have written an epic if I’d put the phone down, except I couldn’t. Even with that time reassigned to me, I wouldn’t have felt able to tell something truly moving, because the weight of life has kept me tethered to the minutiae of existence. My soul is less buoyant for the appointments and errands of human life. Who can speak to depth when life is keeping us shallow?
Historians often caution against comparative thought, like this time before was better. By historians, I mean me. I have regularly cautioned people about imagining the past as better. But sometimes, I feel inextricably saddened that I live in an era of life being chopped up into seconds, of our existence measured by wage. What would life be if your role was to make baskets day in, day out? If your measure of self wasn’t to make the most but the best? Where would your mind go? I understand that basketry, for example, is incredibly taxing on both the mind and the hands. Even the most pliable of willow is willful without the practiced hand of a weaver. But what would it be like to become that hand?
Our natural-born tools, our hands, were at the center of the fight the Luddites had with technology. In the early 19th century, a group of skilled craftsmen balked at the move to mechanize weaving. Named for a fictional folk hero, Ned Ludd, the group was pushing back against machines taking away human ingenuity. The Luddites were quickly vilified in the press, and their movement became a shorthand for refusal to keep up with technological innovation. But their movement was not about stopping change. They wanted to ensure change didn’t devalue humans. Handwork had value beyond the product.
“ Trust the process" is a phrase we often hear online. The Luddite movement was centering process as essential to human existence. While the machines could make more baskets, they didn’t make the workers better. More stuff didn’t equate to better stuff or happier workers.
Since the 18th century, leaders have framed innovation and technology as the engine of improvement. The mechanization of the 18th century, plus the electricity of the 19th century, plus the automation of the 20th, plus the internet of things of the 21st, isn’t an equation that has made people net happier. What has it given us? More worry? More work? More stress? More uncertainty?
The Luddites, though, didn’t suggest technology itself was bad. They wanted thoughtful guardrails on technology where innovation doesn’t supersede humanity. For example, this essay would have taken longer if I’d handwritten the text. I’d have fewer readers if it was just those I could connect with in person. I’d also have less feedback if the readers lived locally to me. Our technological age can be seen as wondrous in the ways in which we’ve opened access and communication.
Machine learning is another double-edged sword of technological innovation. Many years ago now, I was on a panel with Refik Anadol, the artist often cited as the forefront of technological art. At the time, I was mostly amazed to meet a human being who spoke faster than me. But now, looking back, it’s like looking at Pandora when the box was closed. He spoke about using computing power to speed up the process of churning through data. Having started my museum career in the early Internet era, a tool to make data processing faster seemed idyllic.
But now, harnessing the vibe of the Luddites, my question is: why did it have to become a tool that took away the joy of being a human? Why did that simple tool need to take away the craft of writing? The pleasure of research? The trials and successes of creativity? Because, just like in the era of early mechanization, the people most apt to innovate technologically are the ones who are least good at being human.
To be human is to yearn, make, cry, wonder. Yes, hoarding and hurting are two human impulses. But if we look at the long history of humanity, we spent millennia living peacefully, making life doable, adding beauty where we can, like the glorious Jomon pots of ancient Japan or the cave paintings of ancient France. Our digital era is a blip in the vastness of human existence. It’s myopic and foolish to center our tools on making us less human.
The story of Hank Green going into purported AI delusions by relying on machines to do his research is not unlike the first users of mechanization. They no doubt saw the ease of the faster machines, and thought, okay, more product, fabulous. Historically, people are apt to lose sight of humanity. (I will say the quick response to excuse him is largely about the ease of existence as a white man in the US, but that is another long essay.) His return to the land of sentient is one that will be hard. All crutches make things easier until you set them aside, and then you will stumble before learning to stand on your own again.
But, for me, his story just pushes me to remember to express myself as authentically as I can, typos and mixed metaphors included. To feel bound within our circumstances is human. But our species has also boasted so many people who could forget those boundaries to make thoughtful, compelling things. The product is what we have left, but the process is why we care. Yes, we live in a time where the hour is our master, but we are the keepers of our own souls. If anything, right now, after you put this down, give yourself permission to make something--to set down some words, to sketch something you see, to get up to dance. Being human is better than any machine can approximate. Every day that each of us celebrates that existence in the small acts of defiance is every day that we keep our species from disaster.
