The world humans have come to coexist within is as multifaceted as it is ever evolving, since it follows the direction of human development while implicitly establishing the canons according to which human life should be molded. Considering the inescapably pervasive nature of evolution, as a process rooted within humans’ need to ‘be better’ and dictate their lives under the dogma of positive revolution, people then find themselves more or less at ease with the constant change of the outside environment. The extent to which easiness in approaching one’s daily life is measured rests upon the very much falsifiable criterion of subjectivity, which then appears to be an all-encompassing attitude to the understanding, and either absorption or rejection of novelty as it is presented to the human eye.
Under this light, I now reason on the human approach to technology. This has, indeed, been introduced by the very same individuals who may now deprecate its existence or who, alternatively, are driven by the perpetual health granted by the wisdom of survival instinct. While the former see evolution, manifested under the form of technological advancement, as the curse forever infringing upon the ‘disconnected’ integrity of human life, the latter rather grasp the potential of new discoveries, either due to genuine interest in offering an automated complement to their daily tasks, or since they may live in the acknowledgement that human evolution is non-reversible, and its path needs embracing rather than dismissing. Once diversity of opinions has been established as an inevitable characteristic of human thought, I then come to ponder on the variety of spillovers technology has entailed over the course of the years.
Starting from the very first elaboration of computers, passing through the spreading of smartphone technology, until the present use of AI, humans have been victims of their own progress; or, to phrase it better, they have been the inevitable testers of their technological endeavours, and have involuntarily proved silent compliance with development as they started using new technologies to different degrees. Even the one being who nurtured their unconvinced thoughts by planting a seed of rejection towards modern technology would then fall into the cycle of emulation and adoption; they would then engage into visible-to-spotted hypocritical thinking in the very moment they criticized that technology on which they had relied upon until a minute before their words of skeptical disapproval. Here, then, comes my question: have humans become so addicted to technology, either as proactive adopters or forced emulators, to the extent they’d rather project their thoughts on a screen rather on a piece of paper? And, along the same lines, have humans stopped believing in the comforting warmth provided by the reading of ever-lasting literature? Since progress moves individuals and shapes their souls, people then tend to behave according to a similar fashion, which so far has been depicting literature as an avoidable realm, perhaps contrasting with the more pressing issue of coping with the fast-paced nature of humans’ technological selves.
Literature, as I frame it in this article, refers to the enjoyable experience of diving into the domain of humanities, from philosophical work to poetic and more contemporary novels. The activity of reading for the ‘opportunistic pleasure’ of it, as one that crystallizes time and doesn’t require the individual to be learning something new about the world they live in, is being increasingly lost. It seems to me that humanity as a whole, in its process of improving the world at large by extensively relying on task delegation to automated beings, is in parallel disregarding the feeling of reading a story and placing oneself into a character’s shoes, without asking themselves whether their behavior would prove utilitaristic and have a practical takeaway to be applied in today’s world. Literature is born from self-awareness, as a process that reflects interiority and expresses one’s vision of life under the form of pleasantly-to-read written words. While AI, and technology more broadly, are becoming even more prevalent in people’s everyday lives, still their presence may not exclude the more ‘outdated’ enjoyability of relying on an author’s creative, personal and, perhaps, anachronistic depiction of life at large.
Technology being useful and utilizable doesn’t need to undermine the less ‘exploitable’ learning that stems from literature-related consciousness. Posed that the world is technological, that doesn’t necessarily impose a universal law of homologation to technological standards in all life spheres; reading must not be confined to the scientific and tech sphere, since the incredible power and the interest they are able to raise is as real as that of humanistic understanding. The individual who becomes passionate about technology or, more generally, understands the ‘practical’ advantages of its use will then at the same time be aware of the existence of other forms of intellectual entertainment, including the less ‘useful’ emotions that arise from literary work of any sort.
Although humanity is now looking more automatized and increasingly perceives the threatening force of AI, which must be sensibly adopted as a complement to one’s non-easily replicable skills rather than substitute individual spaces of expression, still disinterested literature may remind us of how great it is to feel ‘disconnected’ from the world around us. Indeed, as humans we live for the better; but that better, although greatly resting upon the capability to follow the evolution of present times, is even more enhanced by the ability to discern the greatness of ‘feeling detached’ for a while, as one dives into the reading of some fictitious character living in another time and dimension, whose constructed persona could then trigger a spiral of self-reflection to be ‘practically’ displayed when approaching such tech-driven outside environment.
