Sunday Ramble: Steem, "Dust," Quality Degradation and De-Humanization...

Sorry to keep going on and on about a single point of contemplation here, but I am going to bring up the pervasive "DrugWars Fight" posts, once again.

Well, actually not them, so much as what they represent, as an ongoing example of the possible futures we are moving towards.

Now, LOOK here!

They represent — to my way of thinking — DUST, and with presence of dust comes an inevitable degradation in quality... regardless of whether you are looking at a photograph, your coffee table, dust in delicate machinery or adhering to (and overheating) a microchip.

So, I am really not talking about DrugWars posts, and I am also not talking about actual quality content, I'm talking about a broader cultural issue: the "quality" that creates the essence of our humanity.

The Purpose of WHY We Do Things...

Let's assume, for a moment, that the purpose of Steem, or social media, or even the work we do is — loosely speaking — "to end up with something, at the end."

Some result, outcome, product or service.

Simple enough.

There are different ways to accomplish that. You can (Yes, this is metaphorical!) write one 100,000 word book and "sell" millions of copies... or you could write a few words... 50,000 times.

Golden evening sky

You might be rewarded with 20,000 beans for selling your book manuscript... but it will take you thousands and thousands of 5-word twitter posts to generate 20,000 beans.

Seems to me that a trend towards the latter is happening with LIFE, itself, even as I write these words. We're moving towards a point where people are increasingly likely to try to "create" 10,000 1-cent things than ONE $100,00 thing.

That's where the DrugWars posts come back into play. They have zero value unless you have thousands and thousands of them. But nobody actually wants to look at thousands and thousands of them.

Thanks to @whatsup, I have a slightly better understanding of the underlying financial dynamics behind that particular app... but that still doesn't alter the functional impact it has... at least in the context of this metaphor.

Enter the De-Humanization of Our Lives

These days, the "shortening" of everything seems pervasive and almost inevitable.

I remember a time when a software update was a somewhat big deal that happened every few months. These days, it seems like I get an "An Update is Ready to Install!" message several times a day.

At my place of work, our credit card terminal starts every single transaction with "checking for updates, please wait!" Really? It has been five minutes, and we need to check for an update?

Meanwhile, social media asks people to create ever more abbreviated posts/content... of course, in a place like this where there are rewards involved, this adds an extra wrinkle to people's motivations and subsequent actions.

How is this de-humanizing?

As these tasks we do become smaller and smaller, we become less and less capable of actually performing enough of them to make our efforts viable. And so... we hand off (willingly) what we were doing, to automation. We no longer run the show; the show runs itself.

Now, we undeniably still "end up with something," but does it have "value?" More specifically, does it have value, if there was actually no visible creation in the process of creating that "something?"

In my previous post relating to this topic, @tarazkp used the term "workless wealth" in a comment, and that's part of what gave rise to this line of inquiry.

Whereas there is little doubt we are in a period of change as to how we view "work," when we reduce creation to particles of dust added by automation... what do we really HAVE, at the end?

Maybe we did end up with a "something" we didn't have to work for... but does anyone actually care about that "something?"* Moreover, if nobody actually cares about the "something," won't it gradually cease to exist? And so, cause its own demise? What's more, if we openly admit that we don't care about what was "created" — we just want our reward — how does that make us any different from those who created the Pacific Garbage Patch because they "didn't care" where they threw their trash, they just wanted their Snickers Bar?

I'm pretty sure that if Steem was reduced to millions of daily computer generated posts containing nothing more than the same statistics iterated over and over, nobody'd ever open and read a post, and wouldn't the whole thing just collapse inwards on itself... leaving everybody out in the cold?

Because — after all — watching a computer create and post the same content tens of thousands of times isn't exactly a "spectator sport," is it? At least not if you're an actual HUMAN...

But is the discussion even done at that point? Or do we move on to the next possible step... in which we contemplate a "thing-less" world? Do we evolve towards being purely consciousnesses that have no purpose for "things," and exist purely on the level of "thought" and "spirit?"

Yeah, I know... I probably lost a bunch of you, right there! But it's still an interesting "MindWalk" to take.

Thanks for reading!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190331 16:55 PST
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