/RANT: Individuality is dead

You know, I’ve been wondering what to say, or how to say it, or simply SHOULD I even say something, but sitting here looking out of the window of the metal tube that's propelling me back to a world that is broken.

Good people are out of work, good ideas are not going anywhere, and yet we’re all fixated on a bloody shiny toy (AI) that is promising so much, yet delivering in a manner we have little control over. 

Yet few are taking the step back to see how it’s affecting so much around us.

Because here's what it's quietly killing: the individual. The odd one out, the person who thinks differently, the ones who stand up, ask the awkward question and look around to see IF anyone's going to answer.

We're being flattened into so much sameness, and we're cheering it on.

There's upheaval everywhere, not just in our industry but in everything it touches, and the response from far too many is to grab the money while it's going, barely registering the damage they're likely doing further down the line.

We have absolutely reached the point where the biggest menace to the safety and security of the very environments we've been charged with protecting is us, ourselves. Our own actions, and the actions of some of the people standing right next to us.

The desire to be first, to be new, to grab the headline and the attention of the next round of mugs ready to hand more money to the digital slave, is coming at the direct expense of everything we've spent forty or more years trying to protect.

I'm watching it from the front row. Build more, do more, sell more, then sell more again to cover the backside of the thing we just sold that was never going to protect anything, because what we built to sell it breaks it all anyway.

There was an argument years ago that in the age of anti-virus the people who profited most were the very companies building the protection, the ones some accused of quietly building the threat too. There's a grain of truth in it, because how do you know how good your defence is until you invent something terrible to throw at it? That was child's play next to what we're doing now.

And here's what nobody wants to say out loud.

We're being crushed between two failures. On one side, the reckless, racing to ship and sell faster than anyone can ask whether they should. On the other, the frozen, so wrapped up in the way it "used to be done" that they can't see tomorrow, or admit the approach has to change.

Recklessness on one flank, cowardice on the other. And the ones who are getting crushed in the middle are the folks trying to do this thoughtfully, carefully, differently.

That's who we're losing.

Individuality is dead. We killed it. The machines are just going to get us there faster. And if you want to know why we're staring into the abyss, it isn't because a few people want to see how far we can go. It's because so many more are terrified of taking the first step, and they dress that fear up in so many excuses that we've convinced ourselves doing nothing is safer than moving forward.

We are our own worst enemies. And the worst of us are the ones who shout loudest about wanting change while doing everything they can to damage anyone who dares to be different.

/RANT OVER:

'all for now

Chris & Sid