ONE FOR THE ROAD
James Deakin
I remember the day vividly. It was November of 2013. Yolanda had just torn through most of Leyte, Tacloban, Ormoc and other nearby towns. It was devastating. Unlike anything any of us had ever seen before. I had just missed a flight to the Tokyo Motor Show and was driving home in the throes of self pity and anger when I received a call from a friend asking if I could drive a young family that had just been evacuated from Tacloban to their relative’s home somewhere in Manila.
Seeing I just had five days unceremoniously wiped off my calendar, I did. And that was the beginning of Oplan Hatid––a simple program set up by simple, caring people that came together in tragedy to ease the suffering of others. I drove a couple more families, but after realizing that I was more valuable behind a keyboard than a steering wheel, I spent my time on my page to try to encourage more volunteers to do the same. After all, there were tens of thousands of stranded people and my pick up could only take so many.
Before long, people were just showing up and waiting around until they could drive for someone. Car manufacturers even lent their cars and took turns in providing food to all the volunteers through a roster system. Petron even raffled off fuel. In the span of just two weeks, through social media alone, we had signed up 2000 volunteer drivers and drove 20,000 survivors to wherever they needed to go, free of charge, without a single incident reported. It was nothing short of a miracle––a shining moment in humanity, social media and the bayanihan spirit.
I’ll never forget that time. It changed my life forever, as it did for tens of thousands of others. Facebook had already been around for a few years, but we were still in the ‘poke’ and super poking stage––anyone remember that? Or throwing virtual sheep at people. That was about as aggressive as social media got back then. But even in its infancy, it was at that precise moment when I realized the incredible power of it and my role in all of this.
Pablo Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” For me, it was clear. I was and still am, at the very heart of it, just a conduit. I had found my calling. And social media was the most amazing platform to be able to give that gift away. So over the years, I embraced that role and built a community with like-minded people that has been able to raise money for charity, get road safety laws passed, shine a light on important issues, and a whole lot more.
But sadly, that is now all changing.
You see, while the lengthy backstory may seem like a cyber pat on the back or a self-liking post, I only share it with you because I feel it's important to tell that story again to cement my point here, which is: what was once designed to connect us all, is now dividing us. And that is also by design.
My theory is simple. The Internet has become the digitization of our lives. And on the surface, that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think we can all agree that our lives are far better now that we have been able to digitize our memories with photos and videos; our words, either through e-mail, websites and messaging platforms; our music through Spotify etc; and soon, our finances through decentralized currency like Bitcoin. But there’s one nasty side effect that could lead us all into civil cyber war. The extinction of nuance.
You see, by its very design, the Internet is binary. Zeroes and ones. It is incredibly efficient at organizing, calculating, connecting, cataloguing, storing, etc, but it has one fatal flaw. It cannot understand nuance. That is not its language.
Humans, on the other hand are anything but binary. Our humanity is almost entirely made up of nuance. Which is precisely why companies like Facebook and Twitter etc are trying to organize us (program?) by forcing a binary outcome to everything––like or dislike? pro or anti government? Pro or anti vax? Climate warriors or climate deniers? All so it can categorize us for their advertisers.
The goal was to kill nuance so it can reduce us to a data point. Imagine all that you are, all you have done, all that you feel and everything that keeps you going is trying to be reduced to a data point. So resist the temptation to be categorized. That’s how they win. Artificial intelligence is leading to natural conflict, and eventually extinction, because once you allow them to remove the all shades of grey that are created through nuance, tolerance, understanding, compassion, sympathy, empathy etc, you turn humanity into a commodity.
James Deakin
I remember the day vividly. It was November of 2013. Yolanda had just torn through most of Leyte, Tacloban, Ormoc and other nearby towns. It was devastating. Unlike anything any of us had ever seen before. I had just missed a flight to the Tokyo Motor Show and was driving home in the throes of self pity and anger when I received a call from a friend asking if I could drive a young family that had just been evacuated from Tacloban to their relative’s home somewhere in Manila.
Seeing I just had five days unceremoniously wiped off my calendar, I did. And that was the beginning of Oplan Hatid––a simple program set up by simple, caring people that came together in tragedy to ease the suffering of others. I drove a couple more families, but after realizing that I was more valuable behind a keyboard than a steering wheel, I spent my time on my page to try to encourage more volunteers to do the same. After all, there were tens of thousands of stranded people and my pick up could only take so many.
Before long, people were just showing up and waiting around until they could drive for someone. Car manufacturers even lent their cars and took turns in providing food to all the volunteers through a roster system. Petron even raffled off fuel. In the span of just two weeks, through social media alone, we had signed up 2000 volunteer drivers and drove 20,000 survivors to wherever they needed to go, free of charge, without a single incident reported. It was nothing short of a miracle––a shining moment in humanity, social media and the bayanihan spirit.
I’ll never forget that time. It changed my life forever, as it did for tens of thousands of others. Facebook had already been around for a few years, but we were still in the ‘poke’ and super poking stage––anyone remember that? Or throwing virtual sheep at people. That was about as aggressive as social media got back then. But even in its infancy, it was at that precise moment when I realized the incredible power of it and my role in all of this.
Pablo Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” For me, it was clear. I was and still am, at the very heart of it, just a conduit. I had found my calling. And social media was the most amazing platform to be able to give that gift away. So over the years, I embraced that role and built a community with like-minded people that has been able to raise money for charity, get road safety laws passed, shine a light on important issues, and a whole lot more.
But sadly, that is now all changing.
You see, while the lengthy backstory may seem like a cyber pat on the back or a self-liking post, I only share it with you because I feel it's important to tell that story again to cement my point here, which is: what was once designed to connect us all, is now dividing us. And that is also by design.
My theory is simple. The Internet has become the digitization of our lives. And on the surface, that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think we can all agree that our lives are far better now that we have been able to digitize our memories with photos and videos; our words, either through e-mail, websites and messaging platforms; our music through Spotify etc; and soon, our finances through decentralized currency like Bitcoin. But there’s one nasty side effect that could lead us all into civil cyber war. The extinction of nuance.
You see, by its very design, the Internet is binary. Zeroes and ones. It is incredibly efficient at organizing, calculating, connecting, cataloguing, storing, etc, but it has one fatal flaw. It cannot understand nuance. That is not its language.
Humans, on the other hand are anything but binary. Our humanity is almost entirely made up of nuance. Which is precisely why companies like Facebook and Twitter etc are trying to organize us (program?) by forcing a binary outcome to everything––like or dislike? pro or anti government? Pro or anti vax? Climate warriors or climate deniers? All so it can categorize us for their advertisers.
The goal was to kill nuance so it can reduce us to a data point. Imagine all that you are, all you have done, all that you feel and everything that keeps you going is trying to be reduced to a data point. So resist the temptation to be categorized. That’s how they win. Artificial intelligence is leading to natural conflict, and eventually extinction, because once you allow them to remove the all shades of grey that are created through nuance, tolerance, understanding, compassion, sympathy, empathy etc, you turn humanity into a commodity.