Con$umerism: Comfort, Complacency, AI and Our “Disposable” Culture
America is spoiled by comfort and convenience ... a "fast food mentality." Is AI (Artificial Intelligence) a revelation, or just a technology–driven work hack?
Preamble: What follows contains a few personal contradictions. I know that. That’s why a lot of it was written with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. But not all. I’ll let you figure it out.
My laptop failed not long ago.
I fell into a deep slumber with a word document under construction. When I woke up, the cursor was comatose, frozen in the middle of a clumsily-crafted sentence. It stared at me blankly, in stillness, like the open eyes of a lifeless corpse.
Sometime in the wee hours, my machine flatlined.
Resuscitation proved fruitless. Windows ignored each attempt at a reboot. I quietly cursed as I realized cheap technology had failed me. Again. This was my third laptop that turned to brick over the past five+ years. In each instance, the machine expired a month or so after the warranty date. So it goes.
I do not sink large sums into laptops. I have little use for functions outside of reading, word processing and an occasional foray into YouTube. I’m 67 and way past the expiration date for gamers. So I buy Chromebook knockoffs, thus denying Apple, Lenovo, H-P, Dell and Acer of their most pricy products.
But you get what you pay for, so this brick joined the others at the local landfill.
Thank goodness for OneDrive (Microsoft’s cloud).
A Throw-away Society
Should I go on? I think I will. Recently I had to buy a new single-serve blender to make my afternoon protein shakes. The gears on my $75 super-duper Ninja Pro were not up to snuff, so it stopped Ninja-ing after 14 months. It had a 12-month warranty. Naturally. Perhaps I’ll have better luck with Hamilton Beach.
Contrast that to the $3.75 toaster I bought at a local thrift shop five years ago. It isn’t sleek or stylish with 50+ features. It has more of a bourgeois virtue. The surface is marred by scratches. But it makes beautiful toast. Every time. I wondered how old it was. Twenty years was my best guess. I was wrong. The serial number says it is vintage 70s. It is a stubborn beast.
It then struck me how much of our modern lifestyle is disposable. Modern consumerism favors quick comfort and fingertip convenience. A culture that embraces gadgets and expendables. We have a “fast food mentality.”
I assume no personal liability here. Rather, I place blame on America’s insatiable consumerism and the manufacturing of disposable plastics, food packaging and frangible products.
Examples …
Staples that won’t pierce five sheets of paper … flimsy grocery bags that split during transport, sending my canned goods rolling under nearby cars … razors that go flat … auto bodies with the tensile strength of aluminum foil … washers that don’t wash and dryers that don’t dry … my aforementioned blender … sponges that disintegrate in four days …. and pens with a shelf life of +/- 3 days.
I place blame on insatiable consumerism and the manufacturers of dispensable plastics, food packaging and frangible products.
Many people denounce government for these failures. They believe it has crippled manufacturing – home appliances, especially – with environmental regulations, causing products to function poorly and turn rapidly to landfill fodder.
Some point to the imbalance in trade commerce with China and the mass import of cheesy products. Others blame the evils of capitalism itself. Those on the extremes speak cynically of a sinister plot toward the degradation of everything human.
“There’s a war on value comprised of three parts: war on quality, war on money, war on life.”
Soft and spoiled
On a recent flight, I overheard a fellow passenger complaining about a brief lapse in Wi-Fi.
“Pffft … this is BULLSHIT!” he crowed with indignance. It seems the momentary disconnect ruined his day.
Really? I wanted to counsel this disgruntled manchild: Dude, just think for a minute. Your phone signals are being relayed to and from space! And we’re blazing through the stratosphere in an aerodynamic tube going 500 miles per hour! That’s pretty f**kin’ awesome!
His lack of consciousness was aggravating. I forswear anyone who doesn’t appreciate the luxuries we’ve been afforded. We are soft creatures, averse to inconvenience and discomfort. We live in a time of abundance and material wealth unparalleled in human history … yet bitch about a dropped call.
So much is taken for granted.
We are soft creatures, averse to inconvenience or discomfort. We live in a time of abundance and material wealth unparalleled in human history … yet bitch about a dropped call.
Think of it this way; your grandparents probably never felt the relief of air conditioning while growing up. They went into a bank to get money. And they actually had to unseat themselves to change the channel.
Fortunately for us, their toasters last for generations.
Digital Crack
Now our friend Alexa turns on our lights, switches channels, warns us of strangers, tells jokes, plays music, answers a million questions … she even tracks Santa. Next to our pets, Alexa has become a proxy soulmate. When she’s not around, Siri gladly takes her place.
We also carry technology with God-like powers in the palms of our hands. The whole world is accessible 24/7 through a portable 3”x 6” LCD screen. How reliant are we on these powers? The average American spends almost eight hours a day witlessly scrolling.
Call it Digital Crack. We’re hopelessly addicted to devices of convenience.
Want to see someone have a full-blown panic attack? Hide their phone for 30 seconds.
Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT and AIArt
As if we’ve not fallen deep enough into comfortable complacency …
Today, even art and composition – the human vehicles for the expression of beauty, ideas and emotions – have been captured by whiz-bang technology.
Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer – ChatGPT – is a new chatbot product launched by OpenAI, a San Franscisco-based tech pioneer of Artificial Intelligence, in November 2022.
Most of us are familiar with chatbots. Ever gone to a website that offers chat help? That’s a chatbot using simple AI with pre-programmed auto-responses to your questions.
Well, think of ChatGPT as a combination of a chatbot and Google search ... but turbocharged by digital steroids.
For a monthly fee, users can generate just about any kind of creative output in seconds: complete essays … full blog posts … emails … cover letters … advertising copy … computer codes. You can even create “original” music or jokes using ChatGPT’s “learned creativity” function.
Under a deadline for an ad campaign, or a 2,000-word essay? Bam! ChatGPT will do the heavy lifting. Simply answer a few basic prompts, sprinkle in keywords … (click) … and done! ... a complete, coherent, grammatically correct composition ready for distribution.
Under a deadline for an ad campaign, or a 2,000-word essay? Bam! ChatGPT will do the heavy lifting.
Now sit back, pour some wine, turn on Netflix and chill.
The world already has been introduced to AI Art. There are a dozen companies offering AI-generated designs and imagery. Much of it is highly polished and aesthetically pleasing.
A nifty tool, no doubt. But is it art? Is there virtuosity in imagery that is neither created through human inspiration nor crafted by human hands? Does it genuinely convey truth and beauty? Does it have a soul?
A nifty tool, no doubt. But is it art?
Equivocally, is ChatGPI a valuable instrument for writers/composers, or does it compromise their professional integrity and principles?
My compass points toward truth and probity. The deepest values of art and composition lie in vision, imagination and authenticity. Created by human beings for human beings.
To that end, machine-generated content is rooted in pretense. Keyword: Artificial. Creative compromise. Artistic gimmickry. Just more proof of our attraction to comfort and complacency.
I don’t know. I’m not really snooty. Maybe I’m just a stick-shift guy in an automatic world. A pair of brown shoes at a black-tie dinner.
Or just a dude that buys cheap laptops?
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Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.
I enjoyed your comments about our new world.
Convenience and comfort are the two things that make change seemingly impossible for many. Yes, we have long entered the future Huxley envisioned in Brave New World. Maybe we can add another C - that of complacency. And, as in Huxley's novel, we also have drugs to take off the edge, should we ever feel inconvenienced or discomforted.
When it comes to AI and its dangers, the voices are many that call for caution. Frankly, I think that ship has sailed. Even now self-learning machines come up with solutions the path to which humans can no longer understand. The Unabomber argued for the destruction of technology altogether, a first-rate luddite, for sure. But his manifesto contains surprisingly salient thoughts. I think we're at a time and place where we, because of the comfort and convenience technology affords us, will be unable to take steps in another direction. The best we can do is to teach out kids the kinds of things that will always be of value and that are, for now, far from being replaced by machines.
Oh, btw - nice profile pic! Mark Twain makes several appearances in my last novel. I wrote about him, and a bloody hoax he penned, here > https://danielmartineckhart.substack.com/p/about-the-time-when-samuel-langhorne