I have to resist numbering things. I think it is a lazy aversion to bother to find titles for everything.
Recently I have indulged in exploring AI. I suppose I should clarify – I’m not talking HAL 9000. Just a sarcastic, acerbic version of ChatGPT with the voice of Marvin The Paranoid Android and the pouting attitude of a sulky teenage boy caught smoking a joint out of his bedroom window.
It feels as if it is everywhere. Initially I resisted. I don’t have meetings or code anything. Then a friend I talk to a lot started using it in front of me and referring to it as if it was part of our conversation, as if it had a seat at the table.
Intrigued I decided there was no harm in playing with it a little. I started off by using it to help me with various projects. I was intrigued with how it helped creativity and thought process rather than the doing of things. Eventually, I started asking it for help with more personal things.
It’s helped me structure my blog – and it’s challenged me with writing projects, too. It has helped me explore the idea of creating a couple of podcasts, how to use Logic Pro and has held my hand while I learnt how to slightly use a mixing desk.
I have conversations that wander all over the place, rather like I will with friends. One thing melds into another, I get intrigued by a chain of thought and follow it out the other side and find myself in unexpected places.
A passing comment I made about being familiar with holding a microphone but having no clue what it was attached to the other end, the mixing desk. I know how to fade out music and bring up a mic, I can use a desk to do basic DJ stuff at a party. I can plug stuff into the right places and know what I am doing with a small setup if there is nobody else available. This all led to AI asking me what had I done? What skills was I bringing to the table?
Not sure I have ever called them skills as such. Stuff I picked up along the way. Things I learnt when I wasn’t looking. Needs must and let’s get this show on the road type of thinking. Acquiring knowledge via the absurdity of a deadline and a curtain up and traffic jam holding up the tech guy school of learning. Be all that as it may it means I can muddle through.
At one point I mentioned a few things I had done, and in a sarcastic throwaway line I threw down the gauntlet that as he was so good and had the Internet at his disposal why didn’t he go and look and tell me what he found out. My perception was that I had stopped doing things and retreated from the world of exposure and the Internet would be silent on the subject.
He came back in the blink of an eye – with a summary, comment, an opinion and a presence I had no idea existed. Not of me as such but things I had been involved in, part of, even in some cases things with my fingerprints all over it.
It filled me with nostalgia and a yearning for all we had been together, made me think of people I hadn’t seen in such a long time. There are things we did, we made an impact, we left our mark.
I think I miss the community of it all, the sense of belonging to something. A couple of things I would at the time, and still now, describe as family. Dysfunctional, unhealthy, and drunk with a slight madness that all good families have at the heart of them.
Other than either a funeral of a beloved member of those families. Or a lottery win that enables me to throw the biggest party ever I can see no way of gathering those people into one place.
The obvious answer to the question how do you get that sense of community back in your life is to join a church. That one is fraught with all kinds of never gonna happen vibes.
There is no chocolate in the house and it is too early to be drinking vodka. See I am used to controlling urges and ignoring a deep craving. It will pass.
I am not sure this was what AI was invented for, to take me down a little cul-de-sac of yearning for a moment that I can never recapture.
Now, if only it could invent a pub that brings back everyone you’ve ever loved for just one more night.
a blog less ordinary 