The End of Reality -- a Rant

Forgive an old man his curmudgeonly nature. We, the old men of the world, have finally realized that it isn't that old men complain and rant, but that, with age comes perspective and experience. When i say that "up to 6 inches of snow" does not a snow storm make, it isn't because I am inventing the trauma that was my youth, but because it truly was the case that we had many a snowfall at that level in the past, and it didn't merit closing down the world. Though we have more technology and experience, we have become less able to take up the gauntlets thrown down by mother nature. So let's not dismiss my crankiness as simple crankiness, an expression of too little sleep and too much achiness. Maybe I really do know what I'm talking about. Now that we have established at least the potential for bona fides, I shall begin.

Reality, as we know it, is dead.

I'm not advocating a Matrix-conspiracy theory. We do live in a real world full of sneezes, and Mardi Gras and green bean casserole but reality, that is, our bedrock assumption that things around us are real is fast crumbling.

When I was a boy, we had a computer. The old TRS-80 model 1, from 1979. Once it was retired, replaced by the model 3, then the 4 and the 4P and 4D and then Tandy's PC clone, it moved into my room where I performed obscene experiments on it, testing to see which parts I could touch with a pair of pliers and make sparks. I was curious as to how and why it worked. I was not quite a digital native, but a very early immigrant who wanted to know all about the inner workings hardware and software. We all assumed that this was the dawning of an age of technical acument that would produce a generation of tech savvy genuises who, benefiting from the world of computing, could stand higher on the shoulders of the brilliance of the past and achieve more.

Now I have students who find it easier to buy a new computer than learn how to install an "app." By the way, "app" is just modern slang for "computer program."

This generation of the young people, all born well into the 21st century, know less and less about the technology which fills their days. They have not become the generation of geniuses, but just the next step in the constant slide away from skills acquisition and into the future which is all make believe and pony rides.

I assigned an honors class to read a story yesterday. I found out that (at least) one of my students went to read an online summary of it (canned or chat GPT makes no difference). Again, an HONORS student did not want to read a short story. He wanted to read a summary. Different from when I relied on the Cliffs Notes instead of reading Crime and Punishment? I think so. This was in-class. I was giving time right then and there to read it and it is a short story originally written in English. But the student not only didn't read it, but raised his hand during the discussion and quoted from the summary as if he was an expert. It just so happened that the superficial analysis presented by the summary left the boy open for follow up questions for which he was completely unprepared. That was the fun part. For me. For him, not so much.

I keep track of different types of available AI. Now there are qwebsites and programs that can craft letters, summarize writing, create art from suggestions or stick figures, render in 3-D and then animate drawings made by anyone (I can't wait to see a Jackson Pollock image dancing), replace musical notes with geometric shapes allowing anyone to compose. AI can walk a student through the writing process, providing prompts and driving questions to guide the writing. But who needs that? A student can just get AI to do the writing for him or her. And on the receiving end, the person getting the writing (an essay, an email, an application) need not read it -- just let AI summarize it. If it isn't happening already, AI will sift through resumes and match skills and requirements, then make a hiring recommendation. Decisions are driven by algorithms so a computer can do the job as well as a person, and faster. There won't be any "gut feeling" but why should indigestion drive business practices? Green screens lie to us, sound effects lie to us. We are so used to being lied to that we deserve what comes next -- a culture and eco-system dependent on a constant influx of lies.

So who is out of business? The writers, the readers, the artists, the thinkers, the decision makers and heavens knows who else. And what do we get? A world full of images that never existed, movies with deep-faked actors, presentations made by imaginary avatars speaking languages that the content creator doesn't know. We no longer want to be bound by the world of the real. Remove the watermarks so I can pretend I was there. Remove that guy who WAS there because he doesn't fit my narrative. Make the sun, um, sunnier. Have me holding an apple and a nobel peace prize. Manufacture evidence, prove my childhood was a lie. Teach me how to get around your safeguards.

Seeing never was believing -- seeing, we assumed, was knowing. Now, seeing isn't even believing because I have to go into any interaction with the awareness that I can not tell the difference between the real thing and a computer's imagination. And remember, this is not the mad spouting of an uninformed geezer (or geyser, your choice), but the measured observations of someone who has watched the world go from no computer to more computing power in the hands of a 5 year old than was used to put a man on Mars (did it happen? I can make pictures that say it did)

https://imgur.com/a/QK0iamT

https://imgur.com/blMTuba

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=9149349278483630&set=a.7982234745195095

We have eviscerated authenticity and happily descended into the lie because it allows us to see a world full of all sorts of stuff that we don't have to believe in so we can believe in it.

Fake, it seems, is the new real.