Technology, society, and me

Chapter I

When it all started

This is not expected to be anything deep, profound, or anything like it. Since I usually write about technology news and try to add some sarcasm to make the reading a little bit lighter, today I decided to simply let my thoughts out in whatever order they choose and in any way they decide. I am writing this not as a draft but as my final unedited piece, because that’s how it’s intended to be. I will let this be a stream of consciousness and see where it leads me.

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Since my pre-teen years, I have always been fascinated by the future and what it would bring. I had great expectations, perhaps way too great. I was also much more enthusiastic about the future and more optimistic. I read a lot. I read a lot of anything I could get my hands on. We had a large collection of books at home all organised in a tailor-made bookcase … it was actually more than that, it was something my father designed.

Back to the books, I read philosophy, science, psychology, medicine, about animals and their habitat, butterflies, bees, ants, travel, history, geography, culture in different countries, fiction, teaching, pedagogy, and lots and lots of science fiction. I loved reading about the future and the technologies that promised a better and more exciting life. I also watched lots of science-fiction films and classic TV series. I couldn’t wait until the year 2000. Wow! A new century.

It was the future!

Except, it was not as promised. Or as I expected. Or both. It was a great disappointment.

After all my reading about far away places and exciting cultures, I wanted to travel. I became an English teacher. I travelled across continents; I lived and worked as a teacher in different countries. At some point, I was super excited about technology again. I had a change of career because I wanted to write about the technologies that were going to bring the future closer. I became a technology journalist. I could then combine travel, technology, and write about the future. Yes, my plans were always perfect. Or, that’s how I wanted them to be.

For many years, I was very optimistic about all the technologies that were evolving and even more about the ones that were emerging. I was again excited about the future and how society was expected to evolve into a much better and exciting place. I was able to test many of those technologies at the big tech events. I was excited to read research papers, discuss with scientists, with technologists, with people building the future. I was excited to be one of the first to know about what was coming next. It was like having a little glimpse into the future, my little crystal ball, and again, I was very optimistic.

Then, 2020 came. Twenty years into the new century. Pretty much the end of my life as I knew it. A virus escaped from a lab. It spread across the world. I recluded myself for a few years; I became a hermit. Since then, the technology world has revolved around one single technology: artificial intelligence (AI). This is a technology I followed for two decades, closely, very closely. I saw great potential for AI applications in several industries and I also saw how the same technology could become a weapon for destruction. But nothing prepared me for the explosion of generative artificial intelligence, and much less the immediate public mass release before society was ready, before humanity was educated in the good and the bad and the potential risks of AI.

During that time, I was writing for an EdTech publication. The majority of my writing was around technology —different emerging technologies— in education. I became what my editor called “our AI expert.” And so that’s how he introduced me in the emails when he wanted me to interview someone or speak with someone at a university or ed tech company. This was the period I was writing several times a week about the impact of ChatGPT and other AI tools in higher education, and how it was going to affect the writing of college assignments. It was ChatGPT in its infancy.

In a short period of time, generative AI has evolved and it is now widely expanded. The publication I was writing for ceased to exist; advertisers and sponsors moved their money to other more lucrative sectors, emerging short form social media platforms. I loved my time in ed tech. To be honest, I have not recovered from that unexpected change in my life. Not yet. I suffered two important losses after that. I have not recovered either. I have been suspended in limbo. With the uncertainty this state brings, I took some distance from technology for a while. Technology, society, and the world were moving too fast. I needed to slow down. My state of mind was not compatible with the speed at which technology and society were racing.

I took a break in the form of depression. Because that’s the only way it seems to work. I went into my protective cocoon, into a long transformative dream-like, slow state of mind.

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