I often wonder at our hyperconnected society. It surely can't be good for us to know terrible things that we can't do anything about. I've lived a long life and in my early days I was content to look out the window in the morning, and upon seeing no marauders storming the ramparts, so to speak, I knew all was well with the world, at least for me.

Now it seems we can't get enough of horror. Live-streamed massacres, plane crash videos, and Karens getting schooled.  As they say, ain't nobody got time for that.  Or the pendulum swings the other way and we become obsessed with idiocy. Less and less becomes the new more, and before we know it we're on the edge of our seats waiting for the next TikTok trend to drop. All this while the real existential problem facing us, surrounds us.

Our planet is almost at ignition point. You can forget your Deep Seeks, ChatGPTs and Skynets, or whatever else they call our potential new AI overlords. The actual threat to humanity is climate change, and it's coming quicker than most people think.

Why on earth would we fear AI reaching consciousness when we can't even define consciousness in ourselves, and precious few of us seem to demonstrate it. But here we sit, glued to a phone screen, or looking ridiculous as we lurch around the living room, arms flailing, whilst wearing VR goggles. Blind to what's happening outside. Humans are a stupid bifurcation of the evolutionary tree whose time is, without doubt, up.

 

Excerpt from ‘I didn't get to go to Dumbleyung' by Andrew James Macleod in Follow the Salt (2025, Night Parrot Press) https://www.nightparrotpress.com/follow-the-salt/

 

 

 

Author bio:

 

Andrew James Macleod is an award-winning playwright, poet and copywriter. He was commended at the 2024 Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival, won a 2023 Lake Macquarie One Act Play Festival award, and received the 2023 Talus Prize for Poetry. His poetry appears in two published self-help memoirs.