Abstraction

Me posting impulsively...

Hi,

I paid for lunch. Tapped. Thousands of processes spanning hundreds of platforms across dozens of institutions for food, labor, time, life to pay. One single transaction. A purchase and its intricacies are lost to us. In fact it’s taken for granted. In fact, it seeps into entitlement. Convenience as a Service; as a right.

We’re contained. We fit in an infinite number of boxes, categories, on a volatile spectrum. Decisions and paths made for us before we were born. Name, money, minutes, ready for us to learn and identify with. Age as noun. A discrete number for decay. Tomorrow is a clean break because we must sleep, but the sun doesn’t care.

Singular pronouns for parliaments. Abstractions are so ancient. “Where does my shit go when I shit,” asks semi-ancient dude. Today abstractions are deeper, stranger, outrunning our ability to understand more and more of the layers beneath. A great deal of vulnerability and surrender was required when the layers were few. Now we just trust the magic. There’s too much to comprehend. Plant, sheep, oil, polymer, fiber, thread, fabric, pattern, cut, sew, tag, ship, hang, wear, forget, waste, pollute, consume. An iterative loop, like a coil or spring or a lil Slinky. We trust it with our privacy, our health, our safety. We trust it with our family, we trust it at home, and inside our bodies.

Driving, flying, cameras, medicine, electricity, ice, water, wifi. Skills, competence, abstracted. Each layer a new floor. Coding became possible without knowing how it’s read by machine. Today code can be spoken, gestured, iterated on prompt after prompt. The programmer who doesn’t understand assembly stands on shoulders. The photographer who doesn’t understand light stands on shoulders. Timepieces, calculators, logic gates, resistance, capacity, composition. The woman stuck inside her car because her battery died and she never had to touch locks.

Memory outsourced to search. Chat. Shortcuts. “Saved you a click.” McDonald’s delivers. Locality transcending. Journey abstracted.

Trade, dollars, speculation, crypto, NFTs, the pursuit to gamify life; yours and theirs. But grief isn’t abstracted. Taste, sleep, skin. Not yet, anyway. No service for dying. No layer between you and love. Not yet.

Am I liberated or am I terrified?
Relief |---------------x-----| Terror

I hope this message finds you.