Innovation: the fear and the non-obvious!
Yes, the AGI would someday take your job. But no, you won’t get out of work!
Yes, the Crypto would replace banking and power. But no, you won’t become worthless!
This might sound contradictory, but it isn’t. The history tells us so.
During the industrial revolution, the horse-riders must have thought that they’re getting out of job but in reality their work was just getting replaced by a new set of tasks — riding a motor vehicle (instead of horses).
When the money moved from cowry shells to contract notes (the green papers!), the value didn’t vanish. It just got transferred from one state to another.
The analogies might not always be this simple. But that’s how the world has always been working!
If you just look around and observe, you’ll notice that your surrounding is full of such examples.
For an instance, the internet could be considered as an innovation which replaced an existing innovation which was books (for information) which in turn would have succeeded the conventional information storehouses — such as the storytellers, the alchemists, the priests and the saints — making them obsolete as a source for knowledge.
The problem is we just aren’t aware of innovation in our daily lives. We tend to see it always in future (which is right!) but making sense of that future in present and past gives us the key.
Right from the discovery of fire (and using it for heat and domestic purposes) to cameras in your phone and the electricity! — everything is an innovation.
And we’re thankful for it.
It’s just the form of innovation in the forward state that makes it look fearful. It’s the lack of our imagination! In fact, most of the time we don’t even fear the stuff in question — we just fear the unknown, the unfamiliar.
Moreover, in reality most of these innovations are currently in naive state. But their application looks promising!
They’ll voice the creative expression of human society like never before. But we’ve to make it happen.
Short on doomsday.
Will be discussing more in coming essays. Until then, see you. Thanks for reading!
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