What’s the value proposition of immersing ourselves in the real world?
Longtime correspondent Buck V. recently reminded me of a timeless quote from Yogi Berra: “You can observe a lot just by watching.” Buck added: With the corollary being “you can hear a lot just by listening.”) Having completed a 5,200 mile camping trip around the American West, I had a chance to “observe a lot just by watching” and “hear a lot just by listening.”
Everything I mention will sound so obvious that it doesn’t seem worthy of comment, and that is why it’s worthy of comment.
Electrons in a data center and images on a screen cannot make it rain or refill an aquifer. The abstract, symbolic layer we pay so much attention to can’t change the weather. This is too obvious to matter, until it does.
Convenience comes in one package: diesel. Grocery stores in small towns stock wonderfully fresh and affordable produce from distant lands, California or an even more distant foreign farm. The gas stations all have diesel and gasoline to fill our tanks. This abundance of convenience–too obvious to be worthy of comment–is remarkable. Equally obvious and therefore unworthy of comment is that all this convenience depends on diesel fuel.
The long trains–70, 80 or 100 cars in length, pulled by multiple Locomotives–are powered by diesel. So are the thousands of large trucks that distribute convenience to every corner of our remarkably large nation. All the rail and all the roads take a beating and must be constantly maintained. Roadwork is everywhere. This too is too obvious to be worthy of comment.
Those who own 90% of the financial wealth of the nation are drooling over the profits to be reaped by replacing 400,000 truck drivers with AI. Diesel doesn’t seem to enter the picture. I know–too obvious to be worthy of comment. The screen is all about increasing profits by any means available, and nothing else matters. Until it does.
