'Come, let us reason together."

 

 

At a mall n Guadalajara, 2023

 

The age in which we live is called the Holocene (as opposed to the Pleistocene, Oligocene, magazine and glycerine). It follows the last Ice Age and if our calendars were to begin from that time (ca.11,700) years ago, we’d be living in the 117th Century. The  current date would possibly be August 5, 11,726. Using a Holocene Calendar would do away with the AD/BC (or CE/BCE) which serves little beyond confusing the linearity of civilization’s progress from the Ice Age to the present. My birthday is December 14, 11,642. Socrates was born in 9,204, so 11,642 - 9,204 = 2,438 years ago. Jesus was born in 9,674, so 9,674 – 9,204 = 470 years after Socrates.

If someone asks me for the distance to Winnipeg, I don’t say “70 Km before Saskatoon and 811 Km after Saskatoon.” Have I lost you yet?

I read Mennonite history, and times can be confusing since the Julian Calendar was used in some places and times, so also appears in documentation. The Gregorian Calendar (thank you, Pope Gregory) is what we use now pretty much everywhere, but certain cultures still observe church celebrations according to the Julian Calendar.

But then, there is little logic in the time measurements we take for granted. 12 months  supposedly divide the year into moon cycles, but a moon cycle is 29.5 days, so about a 354-day year. But by the rotation and revolution of the earth, a true year is 365.25 days,

We’ve made the transition to metric measurement in Canada, but I hear little disappointment with the fact that we haven’t extended base-10 numeration to time. Night and day determine the day’s length to be what it is, but there’s no logical reason to divide the time into 24 pieces or hours, when 10 would have served us better. Similarly, dividing the “hours” up into 100-minute pieces rather than 60 would simplify the calculation of time periods.

But you’d be right in suggesting that adjustment to a 10-hour day would be difficult… or likely impossible. Although gasoline is measured in litres, not gallons, and distance in kilometres, not miles, many of us still talk about “miles per gallon” when bragging about our car’s efficiency.  Change requires adjustment, adjustment takes commitment and work. Some of us like the newness of change; others feel more like “why fix it if it ain’t broke!”

The way change often displaces the familiar, traditional space we got so used to—and with which we were comfortable—can feel like bereavement. Probably no change in history can compete with the explosive readjustments being required of us right now. Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings changes humanity isn’t equipped to process. We could grasp the transition to air travel because we were already familiar with birds flying and had made paper airplanes and watched them soar. The complexities that make AI work all function in a micro world in which few of us have become even marginally conversant.

It’s like being faced with the impossible (?) reality of the human voice being transmitted via an electric circuit, and noting that it took time to make telephone utilization general. AI multiplies the complexity of that change thousand fold: reading and writing, information gathering, healthcare, image and movie making, bureaucracy, travel, education, even political/economic/personal decision making via human intelligence and creativity, ETC., are simultaneously having the rug pulled out from under them.

Can humanity pass successfully through all this annihilation of traditional living in a few years? Many doubt that it’s possible. We have incinerated the Biblical caution about “love of money being at the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) and our inability to trump the economy with the human well-being card has left us helpless against anything that makes a profit.

On our behalf, the Saskatchewan government is planning to host the giant data banks AI requires. Certainly their construction will provide temporary employment and economic activity, while their consumption of energy and water in a province that still produces some energy by burning coal, well, we’ll deal with that when we have to… later.

I am one among millions who’ve spent a long life gradually—only gradually—adjusting to change. I and my fellow curmudgeons are made anxious by AI and the way governments have branded it inevitable even as they fail to protect citizens from its hazards. I applaud those among us who are saying “not in my back yard” to data-bank construction. Would we might see a ground swell of “not in my back province” protest, or are we all resigned to the inevitability of the thing?

By the way, our 2017 Ford Focus requires 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres, or 43.46 miles per Imperial Gallon. (I know this because I asked AI.) 36.19 mpg if I’m driving on US gallons.