Artificial intelligence

Some high ranking executive of some think tank of some high-tech worldwide company -tired of imagining new uselessness to create more emptiness- decided to return to the nuts and bolts, litteraly, and started a motorbike repairing business, finding happiness working 6 hours on a tank, a real one this time. He then wrote a book about how we live in an increasingly artificial world where we use more and more technology that we understand less and less. Like the computer I am using right now, or the network it is connected to, or the blog software it is using. What if this post does not appear on my blog? What can I do? We are waiting for companies to provide us with new toys that we don’t know how to operate. Who is using a smartphone to the fullest of its capacity and not only to a/check their facebook wall, b/download their favourite tune, c/post on their facebook their favourite tune, d/change their facebook status to ‘Check this tune I just downloaded! It’s my favourite!’? Same goes for cars, who is able to fix a car today? Or even a bike? Or even a tire? Or a faulty air conditionner, a leaking pipe, a blaring alarm? People live in houses, ride cars, use technology that they not only didn’t build /assemble/manufacture but are also more and more incapable of maintening. In a city like Toronto, where there is almost no public space, real or virtual, private properties, private cars, private goods are the very fabric of the city. What if the owners of these private properties are unable to maintain them? More and more people are employed to maintain the private properties of other people. But this kind of services are expensive. Often more than what has to be serviced. Take a cellphone for example. It is way cheaper to buy a new one than to repair a broken one. But the same goes with much less high tech objects like a coffee machine, a lamp or a pen. How come it is so easy to build a giant high rise and so hard to make something out of the Maple Leaf Garden, the abandoned factories on the east side or the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Most of the would be mayors of Toronto seem to live in the artificial side of the city, discussing bike lanes, subway lines, police reinforcement that will exist only on drawings or in dreams. Perhaps they should also start a motorbike repairing business. They won’t have to write the book, that is already done...