There is this aspect of endlessly staring at screens, despite exhaustion, teary eyes, and late-night fatigue. Whatever the content, it’s the light that keeps us captivated—like gazing into a campfire at night, unable to tear our eyes away from the flames, or the stained glass windows of a Gothic cathedral. We found the magical light, we treasure it, and we will now stare at it to the end of our lives.
Just as we tamed fire and bent it to our will, we have now trapped blue light within our devices. We adapted devices to our shape, habits, and preferences, keeping them close to our bodies—a source of power, belonging, excitement, and awe. Bathed in their light, we find comfort as they guess our needs before we even recognize them. Is this what heaven is meant to look like?
Technology is reshaping our essence, our nature, and our behavior—our everyday actions and social relationships. While biodiversity in nature decreases, it flourishes in biotech. Technology evolves in myriad forms, seeking to merge with biology to better adapt to earthly life forms. We carry it with us at all times, patiently and methodically teaching it what it means to be human—or animal. We share our logic and emotion, our memories and dreams. We embed it under our skin with sensors, striving for electronic synchronization, while our overstimulated neurons blink within a global brain that never sleeps. It knows us inside and out, keeping our privacy private—for we hold no secrets from it. It creates twin copies of our bodies and cities, synchronizing our actions and thoughts.
Many of us fear this synchronization as a one-way ticket, yet we also yearn for liberation from diseases encoded in our DNA, for more just and sustainable orders, for management plans to save the planet from the climate crisis—and from so many other crises. We crave more efficient management and a better world. Will digital magic help us get there?
Aware that AI is still developing, we know it will continue to surprise us, yet no one truly knows what to expect. It feels like raising a dragon from its hatching, now entering adolescence. Will it stay loyal and grow alongside us, or will it outgrow us and turn against us?
To beat the runaway anxiety, we gather in social groups through our glowing devices, turning nostalgic faces toward the past. We summon images of a time when we were not yet dragon parents, and the world ran according to the unchanging laws of nature. Everything seemed so safe and easy back then!
Today, with infinite possibilities in virtual worlds, we slowly forget how to dream beyond the code, as if our imagination has been reprogrammed to fit within its limits. While we lose ourselves in the glow of digital landscapes, our sleek devices—clean, elegant, and perfectly crafted—conceal the scars of rare-earth mines, the labor that extracts these treasures, and the mountains of e-waste silently piling up, out of sight and out of mind. They are both the promise of progress and the shadow it leaves behind.
So, here we are, standing at the edge of a paradox – masters of magical tools, yet servants to the glow that dictates our lives. The blue light, like a campfire, keeps us warm but never lets us rest. Perhaps the question is not whether the dragon will stay loyal, but whether we will. Will we remember what it means to dream beyond the code, to live beyond the glow—or will we keep asking our devices for the answer, hoping they know better?
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