Paradigm Shift
Humans first started using tools about 3.3 million years ago, one of
the first major advancements in human technology that fundamentally changed the way that we interact with the world. Our species, Homo sapiens did not appear until about 400,000 years ago, so these would have been an early ancestor of ours, like Homo Australopethecus.
It would be another 2 million years before the next major advancement, our use of fire. The next paradigm shift would come much faster. About 20,000 years ago, 1 million years after we started using fire, humans began to grow food, in addition to hunting and gathering. This allowed our ancestors to remain in one place, giving them much more free time to invent and create, a huge shift in how we lived our lives.
The time between these paradigm shifts became smaller and smaller with each successive advancement. 17,000 years after we developed agriculture, we started using iron. 3,000 years after that, the printing press was invented, vastly increasing our ability to disseminate information. In 1844, less than 400 years later, the telegraph was invented, and then the telephone in 1876, giving us widespread access to instant communication. It was only 90 years later that the computer was invented, followed less than 40 years later by the Internet in 1974, and then artificial intelligence (A.I.) in 2017.
Who knows what the next paradigm shift in technology will be? Whatever it is, we can be sure that it is right around the corner.
With each advancement comes great benefits, but also great cost. Human beings use vastly more resources per capita than any other species on the planet, and some people use much, much more than others. We live in a time of great wealth, and a time of great poverty. We live in a time of miracles impossible for our ancestors to imagine, and a time of rampant pollution, violence, and environmental destruction. We can communicate with each other faster than ever, share information with more people than ever before with the touch of a button, and yet loneliness is spreading like an epidemic.
Our latest development with A.I. has seen the rise of thousands of energy and water guzzling data centers across the United States. While some might argue the benefits of A.I. in our lives, the damage being done to God’s creation and our relationships with each other and ourselves is undeniable. We are already struggling with energy costs and meeting our demands for water, without the addition of a data center with the water and energy demands of a small town. In addition to that, the noise and pollution that data centers produce has been shown to drastically lower the quality of life of those forced to live nearby.
The social cost is just as high, as corporations begin using A.I., stealing jobs from artists, writers, musicians, photographers, models, stylists, groomers, and people working in dozens of other professions. The end result is that we are being presented with products that give us both unrealistic expectations, and an impersonal interaction devoid of human sensitivity or understanding. Many students that use A.I. are not learning the fundamentals upon which all other learning is based on, severely limiting their potential. This is not the world that God envisioned for us.
Changes keep coming faster and faster, and as it happens, we have to remember what is truly important. None of this matters if we don’t have a planet to live on. No one is going to care about money if there is no water to drink. A data center is just an empty building if there’s no one to look at what it produces.
Change is inevitable. Advancement is inevitable. But, we need to pay attention to the cost. Is human advancement worth the cost of our humanity? No, it is not. Our relationships with each other and with God are the most important thing of all, because this is what makes us truly human. So, as long as we can be honest about what is really happening, and understand what is really happening, then we can hold on to what is truly important, and be God’s children, a community with true human connection, in a constantly changing world.
