observer of times

Why all the hoo-ha about disinformation and AI fakes? That online visibility is itself an illusion requiring an endless supply of electricity deserves more ado. And the presence of mics and/or cameras transforms all who consent – public speakers, interviewers, authors, experts and more – into actors. Despite growing surveillance, hordes freely air their lives not just to earn a crust but to feel seen – a substitute for meaning?

Yet masks come off in private, or they used to before we began to identify with them and trade an inner life for outward attention. I live in the shadow of a big block of flats and some of the tenants leave their blinds up. If they can’t see in my casement windows, how can I see out? So while taking a dump I can watch one of them mug for the mirror. And her loudness intrudes at all hours. If she knew how tragic we find her, would she care? She rates externals. Hence our shabby old building escapes her awareness. And her youth is no excuse; inanity ails the aged. But both urban high density and digital dependency worsen the stress, depression, anxiety and loneliness that breed dementia.

Technology isn’t neutral. It shapes us: the depth or (or not) of our social contact, the freedom (or not) to inhabit our bodies. When I first joined Facebook, out of duty to my then publisher, even the bland blue theme colour reminded me of school. So, after the obligatory Q&A, and having been ‘friended’ by some authors I’d only just met, I felt drained. Because, not unlike how school forced us to sit in orderly rows, platforms and devices interfere with the flow of experience. Through exploring natural vision improvement, I’ve noticed, both during and after screen use, my physical and mental focus feels adversely constricted.

We’ve been staring at rectangles for ages: TV, printed pages, unrolled scrolls, clay tablets… And why not, since we dwell in wood, brick and concrete boxes. We haven’t always built such structures, but as we began to farm and fence land, the nature of human consciousness changed. Sleeping in tipis, yurts and sand dunes back in the day, I used to feel merged with the Earth and the heavens. And floating in the sea gazing up at a sky that, beyond what the eye can see, goes on forever, I touch the blissful edge of cosmic consciousness.

Yet our culture fears spirit, preferring worldly excesses. And since unchecked expansion courts collapse (body mass, cancer, stars, financial systems, civilisations), we don’t need science or prescience to guess that if an engineered pandemic doesn’t get us, then toxins, thirst, starvation, extreme weather, war, tsunamis or nuclear fallout pose threats. And if such scourges take too long to cull our numbers, no sweat. Self-murder is or will be on the menu. In NSW, to aid or abet an attempted or actual suicide carries a ten-year penalty (the offender might stand to inherit). Yet with a terminal diagnosis, voluntary assisted dying (VAD) is legal. In Canada, though, your illness/disease/disability need only be irreversible and your physical or mental suffering unbearable (procedural safeguards apply). So if the system fails to support or house you, medical assistance in dying (MAID) might afford a way out.

As the spectre of collapse looms larger, the system doubles down even harder, a reflex doomed to topple our house of cards faster, with the enshrinement of safety a sign that we sense impending disaster. Collapse discourse tends to feature ageing populations, global warming, resource shortage and rogue AI: factors situated outside us. But what about declining human cognition? Others often follow me out of lifts, then look up from their phones, confused, to see the wrong floor. Cue stampede for the closing doors.

The thing is, like the Church inserting itself between spirit and the flock/herd (invoking a future heaven or hell to elicit submission and distract us from the pit of modernity as well as the blessings at hand if we embrace our birthright, the Earth), the secular powers that be promise salvation via AI. And just as birds eat bread that makes them sick, most humans choose the path of least resistance. Each time Big Tech offers novelty, users get addicted. The brain adapts and old tracks vanish as fast as the crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel. And like most children, adult consumers can’t resist candy. Endlessly indulged by digital witchery, they frequent filter bubbles, revile divergent views, and discover nothing new. Enter dementia.

Widowed at 82 and living alone for the first time, my mother dissociated to cope. She manufactured panic attacks, dropped exercise classes, missed social events, avoided the garden, hid junk in cupboards, quit reading, refused to learn how to use new devices and forgot how to use old ones, declined to water pot plants or shower, stopped changing her hearing aid batteries, and let food putrefy until her fridge bred fruit flies. As a host of home care workers took over, she sat watching TV and dozing. Asked about nursing homes, she’d scream ‘Over my dead body!’ And she opposed household repairs while paying a ‘plumber’ 40k+ in weekly instalments for a fictitious hot-water system. (The cops never caught him.)

Yet this story, no doubt shared here before, is a metaphor. Society at large isn’t faring much better; it’s dissociated too. We call our panic attacks ‘pandemics’, get meals delivered, commune on Zoom, fell trees for a view, amass mountains of junk underground while our instincts founder, and then as technology takes over, we extend our screen time and entrust our money to the machinations of corrupt institutions (like banks and super funds). We’ve lost the ability to live independently, especially apartment dwellers, a rapidly growing cohort. Like residential aged care staff, strata management teams increasingly mediate between unit owners. And even if you own a house, good luck doing fuck-all without consulting council.

Our new strata manager (one died young, the last had a breakdown) emailed us about a tree ‘from [our] complex’. The property manager of the big block of flats next door says the trunk has deformed the boundary fence and we need to act. And so our strata manager got cracking, but her time and presumed expertise don’t come cheap, and she delegated: ‘Copilot asked which Council area it was in and then proceeded to provide me with all the information we need!’ And Copilot concludes its list of bullet points with: ‘If you want, I can help you:

‘AMAZING STUFF!’ she wrote below. ‘I’ll start filling out the application.’ Why the haste? We’ll need to attach an arborist report to apply to remove the ‘brush box’ AI misidentified. Granted, it’s easy to mistake a eucalypt species (one of hundreds) from photos, but Copilot mistook the genus. If AI can streamline your job, it can probably replace you one day. Arborists deal with the real world, but these middlemen/women exist in limbo, reciting burgeoning regulations, crunching numbers, updating fees, circulating form letters and scheduling online meetings. The tree outside my window has since begun to flower abundantly – as if to inspire mercy or to speed dispersal of seeds – and by the time top-heavy procedural machinery decrees its fall, it’ll be far taller: a source of oxygen, beauty and shelter ignored by humans obsessed with what they mistake for safer investments.