Rising Waters

It’s an interesting time to be alive.

I think that’s true both in the curse (“may you live in interesting times”) sense of the phrase, but also in the sense that there’s plenty to be interested in and excited about, alongside the grim and worrying stuff.

There’s a metaphor I’ve been leaning on, internally, to help me parse, sort, and work through my responses to some of what’s been happening in the world: that of rising waters, slowly but inevitably creeping upward toward where I’m standing.

This is representative of the literal sense in which waters are rising in coastal areas, and it points at the opportunities we have to address the accompanying erosion, storm surges, and other impacts of this ascension (by building sponge-cities and flood walls, and by reinforcing infrastructure and evolving our emergency safety systems, for instance).

We can (and should) address the literal realities connected to this metaphor, then, but in my mind it also applies to other aspects of life in which firm footing is giving way to soggy soil.

Many of us (myself very much included) are seeing the industries in which we work—the jobs we do to pay our bills and buy food—rapidly realigning to adopt cost-saving AI-based tools, almost always as part of a larger effort to cut payroll expenses.

That means firing people and replacing them with far cheaper (if, currently at least, usually inferior in many ways) digital replacements that automate much of the work those humans used to do.

Setting aside any moral or ethical positions we might take on the matter, this is a reality that—while not inevitable—is impacting more and more people, many of whom are finding themselves (out of nowhere!) with portfolios of skills and knowledge that are no longer as valuable as they once were, and prospects that may only get worse as this sub-in-able tech gets better.

Rising waters; we can (and often do) ignore them for a time, but if we wait until our shoes are soaked and all we can see is water from horizon to horizon, it’s a lot trickier to find someplace dry and solid to stand from which we can safely plot our next steps.

When faced with rising waters (of whatever kind), I typically try to nudge myself toward boat-building rather than succumbing to helplessness, complacency, or denial.

In this context, that means looking for opportunities even as I try my best to salvage the best aspects of the existing paradigm.

What aspects of what I do now might be convertible (in a form I still value and enjoy) so that they flourish in a different world, shaped by different variables?

What components can be rethought, refurbished, or reborn into new, more relevant shapes?

How might I augment what I’ve already got (and what I’m already doing) with new powers granted by this developing (and impending) reality?

And how might I rethink all of these things so that they’re not just resilient in the face of what’s coming tomorrow, but what arrives the day after that, and after that, and so on?

This sort of thinking underpins everything I’m doing and planning and investing in at the moment, at that’s true of the literal rising waters (and other planet-scale changes we’re seeing), but also in the sense that the spaces we occupy—the physical and cultural environments we’ve come to take for granted—are changing in myriad, difficult-to-predict ways.

This process is an accelerating constant that, by its very nature, will still catch us by surprise sometimes, even if we prepare for it.

It’s my sincere hope that we’ll all figure out ways to stay afloat, and will flourish under whatever soggy circumstances we find ourselves in.

But I’m also reminding myself that this will probably be a damp, uncomfortable process, and that collective decisions about what we do next will likely determine how successful (or not) my personal boat-building efforts turn out to be.

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