Well, Actually!

We are alive, writer and reader, at a pivotal time in the evolution of our species. We have both the opportunities and the dangers, all at once, and difficult to distinguish the two. Such times can be exhilarating and exhausting all at once. Civilization seems to tear itself apart and be building toward something extraordinary at one and the same moment.

As dystopian and odd as we may want to think it is, it also brings a familiar shape. A shape which we might feel from the inside, as if something weighty and gravitational is at work. At other times it may feel like a cool breeze, bearing us aloft on an unexpected flight of fancy.

However we might feel, the knowledge that the winds of change are upon us, can be mistaken for nothing else. At such times our insular feeling of being one small person, adrift in a large and overwhelming universe, helpless and carried along by the tides of history, may grip us.

It is at such times that the basic, fundamental journey of being human becomes accentuated. Even gripped by the uncomfortable chaos and uncertainty we have the capacity to double down and surround ourselves with friends and family and community. Able to anchor our uncertainty in the most solid bedrock of affection, laughter, meaning and celebration.

It is from this most human of centers where we will rebuild from the changes and chaos and uncertainty to take hold of both the opportunities and the dangers. Knowing together that we have brought the guidance, the questions and the discussions - and the human meaning.

We see the future in the bright and curious eyes of our children and grandchildren, as they stand with two feet planted securely on the ground and proclaim: “Well, actually Grandma!”

Living in the best of times and the worst of times, as Charles Dickens reminded us in his Tale of Two Cities. Forewarned and forearmed.

With the brilliant technology and solid foundations offered by our own intelligent evolution, evolving with, not against, our technology. It has always been so, but now it moves forward into the future, as we evolve with the evolution of our engineered intelligence.

Give the children the opportunity to plant two feet in front of us and declare: “Well, actually!”

Note

Dickens allusion. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book the First, chapter I, “The Period,” opening sentence.

On the Making of This Book

This book was written by KW Norton with the assistance of an engineered intelligence for editing and for some of the research. The ideas are the author's, and so is the responsibility for them.