In my early 20s, my two brothers-in-law who now haven't spoken for 30 years were still on good terms. The three of us stayed up late one night for a college-like bull session, talking about the meaning of life. We got onto the subject of mortality and I remember one of them saying something like, "I can't imagine not being here. How can it all just end for me?"
That came to mind this morning when I was thinking about our current set of Silicon Valley tech villains pushing us to supposed "artificial intelligence" and its required building of giant data centers everywhere.
There's increasing evidence that AI is a boondoggle, and the billions of dollars they have all been throwing at it will be money down the drain.
I think they could have figured this out long ago — since they are supposedly super-duper smart — so why are they all so fervently motivated?
We have heard from some who think Elon Musk is working toward a day when he (and his #1 son) will be translated into the cloud. I don't think he's the only tech lord who wants to do that.
This kind of plan fits with the tech lords' utter disregard for climate change, and their active contributions to it through their lifestyles and current push to build data centers that suck reservoirs of water and outcompete small cities for electricity. Who needs a livable planet if you've translated to the cloud, and all the peons are dead?
I'm not sure who will be left to tend the machines that house their embodiments. What will those data center machine-tenders eat? But these tech guys don't seem like they're planners for things like that, especially in the long term.
They weren't the first ones to think of this acceleration to the singularity. Ray Kurzweil, curse his name, published an influential book on it in 2005. But I think the death of Steve Jobs in 2011 is what pushed them all over the edge.
It was a memento mori to all of them.
Google hired Kurzweil the next year to start working on AI/LLMs, according to Kurzweil's Wikipedia page. And we've been paying the price ever since through enshittification and slop.
But they will die, as we all do. It can all "just end," as my brother-in-law has come to realize, now that he's in his late 60s and has buried both of his parents and a brother. And if you can't face that fact, feel free to believe in heaven if that helps.
Just don't destroy the time we all have on earth to make up for your mental weakness — as the tech lords are.
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I've never appreciated the intended use of the phrase "memento mori." Rather than just the bare bones of what the words say, according to this site, in Roman times it was a reminder to "great men that regardless of their exploits and glories, the epilogue would be the same for everyone.... when a victorious general was celebrated in procession through the streets of the city, he was also reminded of his death to prevent him from incurring excessive pride."
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