The future never arrives… at least not as expected… it always brings baggage. Living in a jungle of technology—the Technojungle—can be stressful and dehumanizing. This blog and the books I am working towards are about reclaiming our humanity in a technology dominated world.
I have been writing a blog for some years as just casual writing about my life and topics of interest or observations about the world I live in. Some months [now many years] ago, I was encouraged to focus more on technological change and dehumanization. As I wrote a few more articles, the idea of writing a book emerged.
It is one thing to write a few articles now and then about something. It seems to be another thing to write a more lengthy work. One must become more of an expert. Maybe the task of working toward the more lengthy work, results in a journey to becoming more of an expert.
Either way, the task mushrooms and one reason is the velocity of technological change. As I devote more attention to what is happening, it seems that I hear of something new on the horizon and suddenly, it is here. It makes things a bit more difficult to aim at, since it is a moving target.
When I decided to take on this endeavor, I realized that there was quite a bit already being written about what is developing and quite a bit about what we will be able to do in the future. It dawned on me that I was still hearing those idyllic promises I began to hear as a kid about what technology was going to do for humans in the future.
This gave me a good idea for a starting point. I, a boomer, grew up hearing about the future. I was always looking for that which was futuristic. Then I realized something. This is supposed to be the future—now, today. But where was it? This isn’t the future I have been envisioning for so many years from the promises made by scientists and futurists.
So, that became the focus of the book. In a eureka moment, I realized that the future never arrives. At least not as expected. And, it seems to come with unpredicted and unexpected baggage.
By the time that sank in, I was already on my way to writing and planning a pretty daunting book for my first effort. I decided to break it up and get a smaller book done to sort of test the waters. It is still a slow process for me, however, I am hoping that, since it was writing a blog that got me going on the book, perhaps doing a dedicated blog as I work on the book will help keep me on track.
One more thing about my approach to this. I want to sort of zoom out and take a more general view of what is happening with technological change. I figure I might make something that would have a longer shelf-life that way.
Thus, this blog come website is my way of generating momentum for my writings about the adopted topic(s). Perhaps others out there may chime-in from time to time and that might help with my direction and focus. I think the books will emerge from just regularly writing and remaining emerged in the stream of technological change.
Robert Grahame, August 2014
The Technojungle Safari 