Opinion/Editorial
THE EXPRESSION OF THOUGHT
We cannot understand effects unless we go straight to the foundations generating those effects. The effects themselves tend to blind us with their immediate and emotional messages and we tend to want to dive into denial about what might have caused them or, worse yet, to hunker down and wait for things to return to the way they were. Thought is what drives us up this faulty, rickety, and harshly steep ladder of civilization. We have to keep climbing or we are quite literally left behind, unable to pay for mortgages, utilities, and eventually food itself. We must put our foot up on the next rung, apply effort, and climb or perish. But where is the rung? Where does one place one’s foot? It is not an unwillingness to apply the effort that sends so many artists out into the street to wander shell-shocked through times so difficult one cannot find work parking the old proverbial cars.
THOUGHT. We humans think. Other animals organize synapses, respond to stimuli, and react to the world in genetically patterned behavior. We humans think about everything and the worst companion for getting enough sleep is our inability to stop thinking. The expression of thought has changed. It has changed in almost every area. At one time almost all expression of thought was through action. We were close to the basic animal level in those early days. We developed language and everything changed. The power of expressing ourselves through the spoken word began our dynamic rise into the civilized level we’ve reached. The written word followed the spoken word and mobilized it by allowing for common and specific thoughts to be transmitted locally and around the world.
We live in a time of the new entry to the foundation of our communication paradigm. Expression by image. Television, motion pictures the Internet, and the cell phone have created the expression of thought through images fortified by both the written and spoken word. Much of the social communications industries we are familiar with, or even a part of, are now performed without writing. Films, videos, and television shows are being made without writing or using only minimal written structure. Reality television has become a reality world. Films like “Contraband,” “Mission Impossible” and even Sherlock Holmes are being created and delivered using ninety percent imagery. What dialogue that exists is minimal and meaningless without reinforcement to give it substance.
The youth of our time are being taught to transfer images using their cell phones and tablets. They text using a language so abbreviated it has become a language all but unknown to older members of our combined cultures. The spoken word and writing are being minimalized and marginalized to the point that artistic creation is critiqued with such treatment in mind: “The film or show deserves to be seen on the merit of its special effects and cinematography alone…” That critique is a common one to see in almost any newspaper or journal. This new shift by the movement deep down at the bottom of our foundations of communication is going to change. It is going to become more pronounced as technology brings the ease of image reception ever closer to being a physical part of our mental reality. In the beginning, we processed everything by what we sensed and then responded to. We are returning to a time when we do exactly that again, except the new world will drive us to respond and react to images created from outside of our local reality as opposed to a reality that is right in front of us. The next rung on the ladder is acceptance of communication by imagery alone and then putting our efforts into understanding and taking advantage of it.
There is no thinking in the new A.I. despite the use of the words ‘artificial intelligence’ to describe it. This set of internet-gathering bots, taking everything in, draws from the mass of data according to programs written by humans to allow for any understanding or understandable expression. In other words, the information is ‘stolen’ from us all, attempting to be equated with humans going through life learning, and then the data is processed, partitioned and the algo rhythms are applied. The result can sound or read like conclusions and discussions are derived from thought, but they are NOT.
A.I. is currently the biggest lie of a computing system on the planet. Real human thought and imagination will likely remain the province of the human species until God decides the universe has outlived its purpose so do not be threatened and don’t believe the lies where billions are being hustled away by A.I. hustlers, most of whom are finished with hustling off the money from another lie, and that’s cryptocurrency.
