Annual Year End Rant...

Here we are at the end of another year. I have lived long enough to no longer expect the so-called new year brings new hope. New year's day is a holiday celebrated by everyone on earth no matter what race or religion they are. Perhaps, for that few minutes or seconds before and after 12 midnight, we, or at least the majority of the citizens of earth, are one. Then, at 8 am on 2 January, we get down to doing the same thing we did before we go on our year end holidays. For a fleeting moment we live in a fantasy, living the life we dream of and still earn a decent salary, before, the work week start again, schools are opened, and we are at the top of the ride again, spiraling down into the abyss we call life.

That is, until we retire. For some, retirement seems like paradise. After the long hard life that, the promise of days of doing things because you want to, not because you have to, is the highest level of living on this earth to be achieved. Then, after a while we find out, that we need to have some motivation to push us to do the things we want to do. Suddenly, life loses all its meanings. Many turn to God, spend time at mosques, re-learning the Quran, listen to talks and sermons of the best ulamaks. Well and fine to prepare oneself for the afterlife.... it's just that we're not dead yet.

Some of us are still (relatively) physically healthy, we can still think rationally, and we have so much experience and knowledge of the world that we can (if we wish to) impart to the new generations. Except that, most of our knowledge is obsolete. Or, totally useless, at least in the present world of smart things.

Going back to our daily grind, as we start a so-called new year, we are becoming more relying on technologies we don't understand. We imagine that we are the masters of this technologies because we can command it, by a press of a button, or the swipe of the screen, to do our bidding. But, we don't understand how they work. We only know that we need to do something simple and a bunch of invisible algorithms in a device that we can carry with one hand, do all the work, then, in a literal blink of an eye, we get the result. Slow devices that takes too long to process our request are reviled and replaced. Too long could be about 20 seconds or more.

Little babies can use these devices with ease. Give them one of this smart things, and they will leave you alone for hours. And, some parents actually clap their hands in glee to see their cute little off-springs poke their cute little fingers on the screen. Little do they realize that the little baby, with its limited knowledge and zero life experience, is able to do the same commands that we adults do. Who needs brains.

That is our future, that is what we will be. The machines are taking over. The servants are slowly rising to become our masters.

Look out for a man with Austrian accent demanding to see Sarah Connor.