Well, it’s been 10 days now since I got cut off from commenting on the Huffington Post, which essentially means I seldom look at the Huffington Post, because screw them, but I still have a mixture of feelings about it.
On the one hand, I figured I would just follow news links from my facebook page more and if anything was important, somebody would share it there. That hasn’t really worked out. My friends are an eclectic bunch, but maybe too eclectic. After browsing through the photos of cats, and food, and DIY projects, and the jokes, and the never ending inspirational postcards, and the people promoting their books, and their events, or other people’s books and events, there’s not as much discussion of the news as I’d thought.
On the other hand, the few times I’ve clicked back over there, either after following a link or just to see what was going on, which makes me feel kind of pathetic, like staring through an ex-girlfriend’s window, I’ve realized how much is NOT going on over there. That is, it too has become more about entertainment than about news, an internet tabloid.
The headline I saw today was “Can Human Civilization Last Forever?” I didn’t even read the article. It’s late and I want to finish this blog so I am just going to make fun of the headline. First, whenever the headline is a question, that means they don’t have the answer. Or, they’re trying to be cute. But, in this case, they don’t have the answer because how could anybody have the answer to that. We can’t predict 10 years down the road with any degree of accuracy, much less forever.
Second, there is that word “forever.” No one will ever be able to say they’ve lived forever, even if we invent a live forever pill. They will just be able to say “I am 3.2 billion years old,” because you never know, the next day they may get hit by an asteroid or choke on a tooth pick. Nothing is forever, because it will never be forever.
Then, the most questionable of all questionable phrases in that very short sentence: Human Civilization. I suspect 100 years from now people will have so many cyber implants that they will seem almost non-human to us. 100 years from then we will have total mind-net interaction and be all one hive mind like the borg, although there may be a few brave, stubborn people hiding out in the mountains of Idaho or in the freezing colonies of Mars, because we still have Amish people on Earth today and they are about 300 years behind the times.
So, if we evolve into something post-human, does the “human civilization” phrase still apply?
Lastly, there is the first word: Can. It is always a good idea to remember that there is a big difference between can and will.
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