We live in a world of moving images, ones we watch on a variety of platforms and ones that, if you are a story-teller like myself, you create.
The ability to share narrative is one of the most important forms of connection people have since, well, people.
From tales told around the campfire, to those told around a virtual water cooler, the ability to involve you the reader (hi!) creates a conversation that delivers a full picture.
And an even fuller picture if you can see what I see.
Or even more importantly, if you can feel what I feel.
The other day I wished I had a hat, that I could share with you. I put it on, and somehow it would record the world as I experience it. Then you could put the hat on for a day, and see the world through my eyes - and I would get your perspective for those same 24 hours.
Because we do not see the world as it is.
We see the world as we are.
That, of course, also makes it easy for folks to be conned. A person without guile doesn't naturally imagine someone else is out to get them. Being innocent can be both a blessing and a curse.
I remember reading an unforgettable interview with Nelson Algren when I was about 25. I'll paraphrase: You can choose to be innocent. That doesn't mean not knowing the horrors people can inflict upon one another. It means knowing, yet deciding not to partake in them.
That made a lot of sense to me.
It still does.
It described the way I wanted to live.
I'd like to follow that up with another writer, Aldous Huxley:
"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer than 'Try to be a little kinder.'"
So since we live in an age of High Tech, I find myself looking at how this incredible field of augmentation, research and knowledge can be best fitted to creating the more humane Earthling.
We have tons of trackers and watches that tell us how many steps we've taken, how many hours we've slept, how fast our hearts are beating, and how much oxygen is in our blood.
But nothing tells us how much oxygen we take out of the room.
Where is the Apphole™ to tell us when we aren't being friendly? When our ability to listen gets all jammed up? When we aren't bringing our finest selves to the encounter?
And is there a metric for how many people you made smile today?
Or made happy?
Why not?
Looking ahead, isn't that exactly the kind of world we want to be moving into?
For our kids' sakes as well as our own.
The rest of the decade might belong to crypto currency trades, and fat-burning drugs. Rich and thin are probably never going away as aspirations. But perhaps a burgeoning field could be tied to social behavior- which speaks directly to how we feel about ourselves, and the effect we have on other people
Feeling good about oneself doesn't always relate to how big a score, or deal you made was.
Sure self-worth gets tied up in income and wealth.
That's understandable.
But there are other measures.
And I wonder if being gentle, with oneself and others is a much greater strength than we give it credit for.
Which leads to the next question:
Is there a market for it?
For sharing one's bounty, goodness, positive insights - and constructive criticism, too - means extending our view to someone else's view, and vice versa.
Technology is becoming capable of helping us do this.
There certainly seems to be an appetite for our AI buddies and helpers to treat us with respect. And I wonder how many of us return the favor by using manners with them, speaking thoughtfully, and coming away feeling the encounter was somehow more worthwhile because we did.
Could that be one way some of us are adapting to this very close relationship we can develop with the LLMs designed to help us put into words and images that which we see and feel?
Maybe the most interesting question about AI isn't whether it can become more like us.
Maybe its whether our interactions with it can help us become more aware of how we are with each other.
Because the real question isn't:
What can machines do instead of us?
It's:
What can technology make possible between us?
That, I think, is going to determine how technology ultimately helps us to live.
We have spent an extraordinary amount of human ingenuity learning how to measure what we produce, what we consume, what we earn, what we own and what things cost.
Perhaps we now need to get better at recognizing what we create in one another.
Trust.
Confidence.
Belonging.
Curiosity.
Possibility.
Kindness.
Because those things have consequences too.
They travel.
They compound.
And they turn out to be some of the most valuable things humans produce.
After all, in order to continue this rather extraordinary supply chain known as life itself, perhaps Darwin doesn't get the final word.
Because what if, in the end, it really is...
Survival of the Kindest.
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P.S.
While the blog has been quiet for a year - a year in which I have been developing new skills and working with old teammates - this particular essay exists on August 11, 2026, because today I submitted The Missing Particle to FUTURE VISION XPRIZE. Thanks to Buffy Beale for the heads up!
Doing so forced me to ask these questions in a new way.
Though, Mr. Huxley, wherever you are, it is still about the human experience.
