Prompt:
A young girl and her father using a walking stick walk in front of the large, overgrown ruins of a data center. They are wearing primitive clothes and look small next to the vast abandoned building that is now covered in greenery, with areas of aged technology emerging from the plant growth.
I have been very sparse in posting to this blog, due to the hectic nature of working full time and being a father to young, wild-ass kids. Having children makes me constantly concerned about the world we are leaving to their generation and beyond. Relatedly, being a professional designer seeing the advancement of AI has been both amazing & scary as it replaces the need for my skills in many people's eyes. The push to use AI tools in all aspects of digital life has been as relentless as the push to build the data centers to facilitate its use.
Regardless of how the advancement in technology proceeds, as Heraclitus observed, "Nothing is permanent except change." Whether it's years, centuries, or millennia from now- all the infrastructure, data centers, and monuments to humanity's current state will be degraded and eventually destroyed.
I was inspired by the theme of the amazing game "Horizon: Zero Dawn" to prompt the above image, inducing AI programs to visualize their own eventual cessation of existence. The game took place in the far future, where society has regressed to a primitive state of people living in tribal conditions, but existing among the remnants of a previous world full of technological wonders. It was one of the most awe-inspiring and thought-provoking games I've ever played in my long gaming career.
Tonight, the thought emerged of a parent & child coming across the overgrown ruins of a data center, and I also thought it would be amusing to have AI produce this kind of imagery of its own demise. After thinking how to phrase the prompt to produce what I imagined, the program generated a pretty much perfect representation of the idea on the first try. It's fucking crazy, that's all I can say.
Anyway, as the world continues on, I try to be mindful of "the felt presence of immediate experience", as Terence McKenna mused. I try to be present with my family and life, and not get too wrapped up in the extraneous bullshit. It's the same type of immediate experience a father would have with his daughter as they explore the mysterious ruins of lost world, looking in awe at crumbling buildings containing artifacts of a forgotten technology that is the equivalent of arcane magic. It will all be gone eventually, including myself, so all I can do is appreciate it and be grateful while its here.
