Random Rambling

The human race has continued to evolve over time. I, for example, am no longer monkey, but I am now a chimpanzee (h/t Beck). I believe, though, that environmental factors have influenced the way we have evolved. As medicine has evolved, we have become both stronger and weaker; more informed and cautious, but more reliant on experts and this leads to a decentralized society, no longer with a specific medicine woman or man.

So things change. Heck, I think that if we were to make it 95 feet down the line to first base, there would be an initial increase in outs, but eventually, the athletes would get stronger and faster and evolve into a new runner who can beat that throw.

Technology has helped us evolve into a species with a shorter attention span. We have also lost a baseline set of gross motor skills and strength because we focus on smaller, lighter devices (I am guessing that fine motor skills have improved over the years, just not the muscles that have to do with writing stuff by hand). The computer age made our ability to outsource thinking easier and we developed to expect instant answers, and immediate access to things that in the past we would never have been able to approach. The concept of "digital solitude" (that is, our practice of spending more hours in front of a keyboard than interacting with people) has apparently led to a declining birth rate. (the NYT article is behind a paywall, so here's the NY Post https://nypost.com/2025/03/31/lifestyle/screen-time-blamed-for-cross-cultural-drop-in-birth-rates/)

This isn't just about the loss of a skill, or some sort of experience gap, but a rewiring of our brains and bodies to be able to excel in a very different type of world. The continual imposition of AI into our daily lives will force us to evolve more, to depend on technology so as not to be able to do things on our own.

We are becoming extensions of the cloud, instead of the cloud being an extension of us.