Things we have lost to Machines

First we taught them to make us stronger, let us drive and fly and then they became smart and taught us. Now, most of us have lost what we let them take from us.
Here are a few of them.

The ability to read maps or use a compass
Do basic arithmetic without a calculator
Take the square root of a number with only a pencil
Read an analog clock
Hand write a letter in cursive
The ability to reason in other than a straight-line
Interact in a group
collaborate with others on problems
Ability to see that life is more than a one or zero
Communicate ideas verbally
Penmanship
Grow and preserve food
Civility
Ourselves

Is this time the sunset of the age of reason and the beginning of the new darkness or will it be a time to reclaim our ability to question rather than accept, lead rather than be led and replace dogma with logic. Only you know. “Don’t trade your heroes for ghosts or hot air for a cool breeze.”

Once we, the ‘boomers’, are gone it will be your country.

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Our Future? Your choice

With the merging of biology and AI technology starting to come over our species’ horizon I was wondering if in 100 years we’ll be able to answer the question – ‘Who are we?’. These poems by Richard Brautigan look at this thought from two different ways.

“I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.”

“Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this”