There's a seaside walk that starts or ends at my seaside cottage on the Gingham Coast that is, I believe, one of the great walks in all the world. For three-quarters of a mile, with no cars crossing your path, you can walk uninterrupted along the sea. I think it might be the longest non-car-affected walk you can take in the tri-state area. And all the while, the sea is just over your shoulder, mere yards away.
I don't love it up here in Gingham-ville.
I miss the people and the energy of New York City.
I miss a variety of foods.
And how I can get anything I want in minutes.
I miss the anonymity of the city, how if you have a shitty neighbor you can all-but ignore them. That's harder to do in upper-suburbia where those shitty neighbors are apt to leave their garbage pail in front of your walk, just to provoke you.
I have an infinitesimal annoyance fuse.
There's a lot I hate up here.
But this walk almost makes it worthwhile.
I have been taking this walk two or three times daily for the almost seven years we've been up here. And while I generally don't carry my cellphone with me while I walk, on occasion, I need to make a call and I try to kill two birds with one scone. (All baked goods in the area are stale. Always.)
For all the years I've been doing this, I've always gotten good reception and have had few dropped calls.
This week that changed.
I don't anymore get cell service on my walk.
My wife has a cousin in one of amerika's most expensive zip codes--near the Getty Villa in Malibu. And another cousin in another of amerika's most expensive zip codes in Palos Verdes Estates, south of LAX. Each of the cousins involved has come to accept that they cannot get cell service from their multi-million dollar homes.
I think this is our AI future.
Despite all the blandishments about how AI will improve everything, everything will continue to get worse.
AI is probably f-ing up cell service. It's in everything. Why wouldn't it be in tele-communications?
Despite all the trillion-dollar corporate PR we're being force-fed about AI, you can't make a return, reconcile an overpayment, get an answer to a simple question, extend or change a hotel reservation, get search results that don't return a listing for a Dunkin' Donuts when you're looking for Cuban food.
AI oppression has gotten so bad, it's no longer worth fighting with the giant holding company you're freelancing for when they find a way to schtup you (and they always do.) I could have the fight. But to get the additional $4000 they owe me would cost me probably $10,000 of aggravation.
Before we trust our legal system, our medicine, our education, our everything to AI, it would be nice to see something simple like a phone-call completed with a success rate similar to what we might have experienced 75 years ago.
I think about battlements and forts.
About one-thousand years ago architects realized that curved fortifications would resist ballistic onslaughts better than right angles. Most castles and forts adjusted.
Then, a few hundred years later, those curved walls were deemed old-fashioned and the world went back to flat walls, not caring they were less safe.
Technology is great.
But it needs people in charge.
If only to say "when" like kids do when you fill their glass with milk.
"When."
When to non-tax paying plutocrats.
When to rapist presidents.
When to complicit congresses.
When to technology that extracts from humans.
When to 99.7% of "becoming part of culture."
When to not reading.
When to YOYO (you're on your own.)
As a society we no longer say "when."
We've decided, like Scarlett O'Hara decided, to throw restraint and common-sense out with both hands.
When.
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