It's very hot, as predicted, and some of the media are in a frenzy looking for the place and time when the next record is broken. As if it's a competition. And the winner is? We are keeping the house cool the way we always did, sleeping in the basment, using the early hours for gardening and so on. It works, for now.
The solar battery is full, every gadget in the house is running on sunshine, plus we are feeding the grid and also some neighbourhood homes. I suppose it's not strictly legal, cables through gardens are involved, but the sun shines and shines for free. It's amazing what PV on a little roof space, shaded for half the day, can produce.
I am sort of walking or better call it hobbling, limping along. No more moon boot. The physio people are "optimistic", another three months give and take, they assure me. Another three months??!! But hey, I can cycle now and yes, that's brilliant.
Meanwhile.
Certain resources (he is talking about water) must be allocated and prioritised for the technology rather than for human consumption.
Biological limits are real, but digital potential is infinite. If we starve our data infrastructure of cooling resources just to sustain baseline human comfort, we are actively delaying the birth of a super-intelligence that could solve all of our resource problems in the first place.
Sometimes you have to prioritise the intelligence that will save us over the biology that slows us down.
To clarify. Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights – fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity and prosperity.
A few years ago, five tech billionaires, who shall remain anonymous, invited Douglas Rushkoff (professor of media theory and digital economics) to a luxury spa – for a fee equivalent to a third of his annual salary.
Contrary to his expectations, the super-rich were not seeking investment advice on future technologies but instead asked about survival in the wake of a potential catastrophe, which they refered to simply as ‘the event’.
Should one flee to Alaska, New Zealand or Mars?
Should they start securing their food supplies with special locks, the combinations to which only they knew. Or fit their bodyguards with a sort of disciplinary collar in return for their survival at their side. And what about robots that could be used as bodyguards or labourers.
Of all people, these tech entrepreneurs whose neo-colonial production conditions are ruining entire continents now want to escape and leave the rest of humanity behind.
We have to make do with what we have, even if right now it seems completely inadequate and suboptimal, in an attempt not to resign ourselves to it, but to cope and to let our potential grow and above all, to remain comitted to humanity. Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine what a better world would even be like? Hopelessness isn’t natural. It needs to be produced.
People everywhere are asking; how did we get here? Most of them say - surely it was them, those people over there that caused this. And the people over there turn and point their fingers right back at them, which results in everyone being implicated and none being responsible. But that trick will no longer work. We can no longer escape responsibility for our collective choices. This is a time of accelerated accountability for our species, not just some, but all. The age of deflection is dying away. We must all take responsibility for the state of our world because we all possess the power to change it – when we work together. But when we fail to check the recklessness and cruelty of foolish men or to shake ourselves from the fantasies that we weave around them, we all suffer the consequences of their folly. Therefore, we have become necessary allies in the unfolding of a new reality.
Sherri Mitchell
