++++

A couple months ago I was out driving and caught a glimpse of a completely empty Blockbuster video store. The babyface and I visited it a few times in the few years we’ve been living on the west side of town, but not enough for it to hit on a personal level. Only, in some sense it does hit on a personal level because one Blockbuster store is essentially all Blockbuster stores and throughout the course of my life thus far, Blockbuster was a staple in take home entertainment.

That’s just it though.

It was a staple.

Regardless, to see it fall is actually kind of eerie.

Understood, but eerie nonetheless.

Here’s this mammoth corporation thriving off video and game rental sales for over 20 years and suddenly, they’re filing for bankruptcy, all because of a lack of foresight into how quick technology would advance and an inability to keep up with it. Sure there are still plenty of Blockbusters left across the country and they’re competing with Netflix in the whole online rental realm, but out of 3300 stores, they had to close 900 of them.

That’s more than one quarter of their operations shut down.

Now, I’m not really for corporate America.

At all.

I’d prefer that if video rental stores were going to exist, or any stores for that matter, it be all mom and pop operated. The fact of the matter though is that they aren’t and if these large chains are going out of business, any privately owned establishment is most definitely going to go out of business if they haven’t already. There isn’t really a market for independently run online video stores, is there?

My fear over the closing of Blockbusters comes not because of their fallout, but of the idea of fallout in the first place. This whole idea of the advancement of technology wiping businesses out. I mean, how long do we really expect retail stores to last? There’s a whole generation of people who are shopping almost exclusively online, save for groceries and emergency supplies, but it’s only a matter of time before immediate needs are satisfied in such a fashion as well. With time, the shipping of goods is only going to become quicker and more efficient as warehouses will start to pop up all over the country just to hold everything everyone is demanding.

I suppose said warehouses will still need employees, but for how long? I’m sure there are already companies using artificial intelligence as a means of product sorting and selecting and that’s only going to keep rising.

So at what point does it stop? Technology will always advance, but so will the population, save for the introduction of strict population control or a Children of Men type of scenario. I know we’re supposed to live in the moment and plan for a future that’s not too distant, but I guess I’m a little more selfless than I realize. I worry for future generations that will exist past my own. I mean, I would love to live in a world where we could all bang on the drum all day and leave the work to machines, but there are certain professions in life that will always need to have a touch of humanity and in a world run almost entirely by artificial intelligence, how do you decide which humans will still have to work while the rest of us play?

I don’t know, maybe it’s ignorant to believe that humans will always be needed and that artificial intelligence could never do everything. Maybe it’s that very ignorance that’s driving us to create more and more superior A.I., this thought that humans aren’t replaceable but are in need of assistance. Maybe we are ignorant and eventually we will face a Terminator style judgment day where we become the assistance or the not-at-all.

I suppose the fault would only be our own, though. We’ve become a civilization bent on making things easier and more convenient for ourselves, taking all of the work, and thus, the lessons, out of life, and really, what’s the point in living if you’re not learning?

Maybe someday it will all turn around. Maybe some day corporations will fall and a much simpler life will rise again, making room for a new American dream.

The dream of simplicity.

Because let’s face it, the more and more technology advances, the more stressful life seems to get. This whole idea of ease and convenience just seems to escalate the amount we put on our plates to the point of not having room for everything and having to go back for seconds just so we make sure to get a taste of everything. The issue here is that the more we taste, the more we want and the more we want, the less we’ll ever be satisfied with what we already have, making life more and more intolerable, throwing any chance of happiness out the metaphorical window.

Go back to your roots, people.

Take a look back at past generations at what was really important. What really needed to be more convenient and what we, as an intelligent civilization, could re-adopt into our lives to restore some humanity back into them.

If you’re having a problem feeling this one out, stay tuned and I’ll give you a few suggestions, yeah?

Tagged: evolution, society, fallout, blockbuster, staple, eerie, mammoth, corporate, America, mom and pop, technology, machines, terminator, simplicity, dream