Looms & Luddites
A reflection on tools, fools and roots
Jeri Ryan… Seven of Nine. Resistance is futile.
If you know about the Borg… You know the catch phrase. My initial response? Resist! The contrarian in me can’t help it.
What do you know about Luddites? Was there actually a leader that founded the movement? Ned Ludd?
Even though AI says there’s no connection… Is Ned Flanders related to Mr. Ludd? Someone so nice, any reasonable person would be completely wrong to dislike him.
Could there be a tool so useful that reasonable people would look ridiculous for smashing it?
“AI will shape the world…”
BOOOOOO!!!
Full disclosure… I used AI as a tool to help me organize my thoughts and write this article. So if you abhor AI-assisted writing, you may want to stop reading now.
After The Long Game
I’ve been exploring character and story concepts for my next album. When Time Exhales. Uniforms.
What if the universe expands and contracts… similar to how we breath?
Exhale until all the air is out of your lungs... hold it. Try to exhale more air. Keep holding it. How long can you keep pushing a little more air out and hold it?
After such exhaling experiments… I find myself oxygen deprived and gulping, gasping to inhale. Then I try the reverse.
Inhale until your lungs are full… hold it. Try inhaling more air. Keep holding it. How long can you keeping pulling a little more air in and hold it? I find it funny and ironic that I feel just as oxygen deprived after inhaling all that wonderful air.
Maybe the universe is similar.
Who wrote the laws of nature? Who decided what respiration is? Who came up with time and how cycles like respiration seem to repeat? In goes out. Up goes down. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I recently read a post from a brilliant engineer and technologist. His thesis seems to be that every generation tries making machines in its own image… and in doing so, is forced to reckon with what humanity actually is.
King is a character I made up. He is the leader of humanity’s compulsion to seize creation and remake reality in its own image.
I imagine King is the first prodigal son. “Father, I want my inheritance!” The breath of life appears and the universe begins… the expansion and contraction. And King begins trying to create his own version of heaven.
King’s infection afflicts us all. Free will and choices every day.
I Don’t Use Spreadsheets
I started my professional career in data processing. Calling financial services companies. Placing customer orders for stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Calling back the next day to get the settlement details – prices, dollar amounts, etc. Then manually typing all the settlement details into the trust department application terminal (yes - it was an IBM mainframe app).
There was only one PC for the entire team. I loved playing with the spreadsheet software – and no… It was not Microsoft Excel. It was Lotus 1-2-3. Do you remember backslash commands??
A few years later when I joined IBM, I remember a time when I asked an IBM Finance colleague for financial projections and a business case P&L for my product – the IBM TotalStorage 200i. A few hours later he came into my office with the information written on a legal pad.
“Where’s my spreadsheet?” I asked with what I’m certain was a bewildered look on my face as I looked at the papers he handed to me.
“I don’t use spreadsheets.” He replied and walked out.
Suffice it to say, he retired at some point during my first year at IBM.
Some people embrace new technology, new tools. Others do not. Maybe our reactions to new tools give a bit of insight into what we believe about ourselves.
Where Are Your roots?
In my made up cosmology, King knows everything that can be known in the knowable universe. He sees everything that is happening and attempts to create his version of reality.
The Tower of Babel collapsed. The Library of Alexandria burned. The looms were smashed. I suppose the overzealous zealots are to blame. Or perhaps it is the nature of roots sunk deep into ego, because none of the protests, violence or destruction stopped the progression and adoption of technology.
Yet the protests persist. The roots into our egos run deep.
AI Writing Conclusion
Prompt: Write a conclusion to this article that might cause AI bashers to pause.
Claude: Pentecost — the day Christians celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples he had to leave. Not as abandonment, but as necessity. The vine doesn’t uproot itself and follow you around. You stay connected, or you don’t.
A fool with a tool is still a fool. But a craftsman who knows where their roots are — who can pick up a loom, a spreadsheet, or an AI and bear fruit through it without mistaking it for the source — that person was never threatened by the tool in the first place.
The hammer falls. The protests persist. The technology advances. And the question underneath all of it remains exactly what it has always been: where are your roots?
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Not exactly what I would have written… but close enough.
