Everything in life is just for a while, according to science fiction cult hero Philip K. Dick
In 2017, the first ever robot, Sophia, was granted honorary citizenship by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Kudos to robotics! And kudos to humans, particularly the roboticist David Hanson, who created Sophia. But such a breakthrough, our recognition of the potential of artificial intelligence, naturally came with some opposition and a lot of skepticism, even in Saudi Arabia, especially in Saudi Arabia, where it was argued that women, “real women,” as opposed to the android Sophia, had yet to enjoy their full rights not only as citizens of the republic but also as human beings.
When my niece shifted to the iPad on fifth grade, she ditched her big bag as she no longer needed to carry physical books to class and so her iPad became everything to her, her books, her homework, her means of brainstorming with classmates on school projects, her notes…
In 2017, I paid ₱57,000 to watch Madonna up close at her concert at the SM MOA-Arena, her very first and probably her last in Manila. Although I was guilty of the same, at some point, I looked around at the concertgoers on the front row, who paid as much as I did, and I decided right there and then to keep my phone in my pocket. Because we were taking a video of her performance for Instagram or Facebook Live or for our personal archives, we were all watching Madonna through the screen of our phones instead of on stage, in flesh and bones and sweat and tears. The ticket price was too much to watch something, even Madonna, on a two-dimensional screen.
At my office, so many new faces, young people, who have been hired on account of their social media skills, and yet you run into them in the hallways and they look past you, as if you weren’t there, or otherwise scurry away like a wild animal, like rats. What’s social about that? When I am in the mood, or if they happen to walk into my work space without acknowledging my presence there, and only if I am particularly invested in their good manners and right conduct, I call their attention. I tell them, “Your mother sent you to school so you will learn to deal with people, otherwise it would have been cheaper if she decided to just keep you at home and teach you there.”
It took us 5,000 years to get to this future, but this future is moving, moving, moving too fast, changing drastically every after three months, and to keep up we have to keep moving, moving, moving, never stopping to make sense of where we are.
Over the holidays, I gave my niece a set of Bluetooth-enabled headphones because she had them on the list of things she wanted for Christmas. Over dinner, though, I told her, “Be careful. With that plugged in your ear, you might miss a lot of opportunities.”
“Opportunities, like what?” she asked.
“If I had to ask a stranger, I wouldn’t ask someone who would need to remove a headset to hear me, so I’d ask someone else,” I said. “So you might miss meeting that stranger, who might have turned out to be your very best friend or your boyfriend or the love of your life.”
I’m glad, though, that books aren’t going anywhere, not yet. I think there are more books available in Manila than ever before. In 2018, when I posted on Instagram the cover of the early edition of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, someone quickly pointed me in the direction of Fully Booked, where he recently found a copy. On Amazon, only digital copies were available then. To Amazon, the dystopic, post-apocalyptic novel, published only in 1968 and later loosely adapted into the 1982 neo-noir science fiction film Blade Runner, was out of print—and if not for the rekindling of our love affair with books that, to my observation, began in 2012, it would have been out of memory forever.
Even in 2018, the future had made its presence felt. Since the late ‘60s, we have been obsessed with the future, a future enabled by flying cars and time travel and eternal youth, and now that future is here. It took us 5,000 years to get to this future, but this future is moving, moving, moving too fast, changing drastically every after three months, and to keep up we have to keep moving, moving, moving, never stopping to make sense of where we are.
Thankfully, in this future, I am not out of dreams and my most urgent dream is to acknowledge the renewal of our interest in the humanities—history, languages, art, poetry, literature. In the recent past, in our desire to embrace modernity, we ditched all things old and obsolete, stayed away from all things ancient or old-fashioned.
Not anymore. That attitude is old now. The kids now read Herman Hesse or W. Somerset Maugham and, yes, Philip K. Dick, if only we make them as easily available as instant noodles in the 24-hour convenience store. And who cares what decade they are from, or what era, or what epoch? Ed Sheeran or Elvis Presley, Camila Cabello or Edith Piaf, they are all the same in terms of accessibility on YouTube or Spotify and if you can sing to it, or dance to it, or let go of a part of yourself with it, why not?