Meaning, Technology, and Human Evolution

What is the purpose of living?

Originally, we only lived to survive.

We searched for food and shelter.

First, we made tools that made it easier to survive.

Then, we controlled fire.

Fire gave us safety and security.

But things were still tough,

we still had to search for our food.

That is, until we didn’t.

We began to gain control over the natural world.

We grew our own plants and farmed our own animals.

Meaning shifted from survival, to sustenance.

We used fire to build better things.

We developed new tools and materials that made it even easier to survive.

We started writing, to preserve our understanding of these things.

Meaning shifted from providing for yourself today, to your community tomorrow.

We made the wheel, and with-it roads, allowing us to move more freely amongst ourselves.

We started living as communities of unique individuals with specialized skills.

We started making schools to build upon what we had already learned.

We invented the concept of ownership, to identify something as yours and nobody else’s.

Is the meaning of life still just to survive? Or is it something more?

As society became more complex, so did our lives.

We kept pushing and came up with complex solutions.

Early analog computers helped us solve our problems.

Gears arrived and introduced mechanization.

The printing press gave us mass distribution of knowledge.

We applied that knowledge and created the steam engine, and electricity.

Before you know it, mass manufacturing and distribution changed everything.

Companies start producing things for the entire planet.

It takes a large workforce to make that happen.

Capitalism sweeps us off our feet.

People are working so they can buy things and buying things keeps people working.

A new identity is formed where one takes pride in their place as a worker and expresses themselves through the objects they own.

Mass-media gains traction through film and television.

The internet comes along and connects us all.

Consumerism becomes deeper entwined with human culture.

Things are now traded at the push of a button without even leaving your home.

Media is constantly a click away, and we are constantly consuming it.

TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, Xbox, iPhones, Amazon, all connect us while letting us escape from the responsibilities we once had.

They entertain us, teach us, provide for us, and let us communicate how we’ve always wanted to,

but not the way we always have.

What is your purpose when you have the world at your fingertips?

It doesn’t stop here, in fact, this is only the start.

The technology gets better, life gets easier.

Artificial intelligence is quickly catching up to us.

It already knows you better than you do.

What you’d like to watch, what you want to buy.

It’s in our factories helping us make stuff.

It’s driving our cars too.

What happens when it keeps simplifying our world for us?

When technology is at the point when we no longer need to do anything for ourselves?

What does life look like when we don’t need to work anymore?

When technology does the work for us.

If we exist to survive, what do we do when survival is effortless?

How does technology keep us satisfied in a world without challenge?

We create opportunity for challenge.

We create new experiences.

We create media that knows us, is tailored to us.

We create media that lets us explore our own stories and the stories of others.

We create opportunity to learn from the past, the future, and the now.

An opportunity for real and imagined realities.

An opportunity to find new meaning.

We find a new way to feel alive.

The only question is, how will you feel alive?