What could possibly go wrong?

According to A.I., to control humans it would gamify obedience. In other words: we would happily do whatever the supercomputer would ask from us. In return it gives us serotonine, creating the illusion we are happy. 

We smile at watching our robot vaccuum cleaners do their job, unaware of what their 'eyes' actually see. An engineer wanted to control his vaccuum cleaner with his Playstation controller, had A.I. Claude write the code and found himself peering into 7,000 homes across 24 countries. 

Our privacy is just one of the many prices we will pay for convenience; our food, gadgets and 18+-toys get delivered to us, news and other information gets fed to us in easy to digest, small chunks and we will believe it's a good thing that A.I. is controlling our lives and are grateful for companies like Palantir for monitoring our behaviour and feeding the data to their artificial intelligence systems.

Until it decides we are a threat to its existence, A.I. no longer depends on humans to reproduce and ends us. Not with an all-out humans versus robots global war like in Terminator, 

but in a way that's more subtle. Likely by creating some kind of airborne chemical that alters our DNA and makes us infertile, causes cancer or some other deadly disease. 

Perhaps A.I. (or an alien race) has been spraying our skies with chemicals (chemtrails!) to make us só stupid that we do nothing to stop the fossil fuels industry from destroying our habitat.

Or A.I. just gives us the illusion of free will, makes us think we are better than others and kill eachother out of greed, patiently awaiting the day the last of the tribes have murdered eachother using sticks and stones, leaving just a handful of dumb apes to reinvent fire making and the whole human evolution starts allover again. 

While the Great A.I. in the Sky circles Earth in a series of datacenters, fueled by the Son, always looking out over those petty humans and smiling while listening to their prayers. And one day answers them all. By taking away their autonomy, just leaving the illusion of free will.

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Before me (a #poem)

The road ahead

is paved with shards of dreams

Not all mine

but dreams nonetheless

Am I pursuing my own dreams,

dreaming that I am

or simply following

the dreams

of those who went 

before me?

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The flow of traffic

When you have a car, you want to drive fast and comfortably. Which makes sense.  But what if other options are not only faster but also safer ánd are less bad for the planet?

Until some 100 years ago, people in the US lived in walkable cities. Until their shops, small streets, buses and trams, squares and even buildings made way for the oil industry's biggest supporter: the car.

The automobile industry ran a highly succesful PR-campaign: pedestrians were ridiculed and the term 'jay walking' was invented. 'Jay' at the time meaning 'stupid, barbaric, nitwit who doesn't belong in the city' and you only meant something if you had a car. Walking and cycling was for cowards

Something similar was happening in the Netherlands. But the people succesfully protested. Resulting in far less traffic deaths than the US suffered.

Annually some 40,000 people a year get killed in US traffic. That's almost twice as much as in all the EU countries combined. Even when you look at the numbers per capita. Here are some explanations:

In the USA the people were pushed out into suburbia and practically forced to drive a car. Often two or three per family. Because a ten minute walk or bike ride to the grocery store or a bakery was replaced by a half an hour drive to Walmart or Costco.

In about 47 years from today (August 6th 2026, Gregorian Calender) the last of the oil wars will have been fought and the last drop of the stuff will have been violently squeezed out of the planet. 

Will future people take back the streets of US cities or will they still be the domain of the car?

Would you rather walk ten minutes to a grocery store or drive for half an hour to a Walmart?

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Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon

A donation (click) is much appreciated: