Apocalypse When?
I’m reminded of this HBO “documentary” I once watched when my mom was away, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981). About Nostradamus, and narrated by Orson Welles (of course), who was (of course) smoking a cigar, it was brimming with Islamophobia, but my little 10 year old mind couldn’t see that. Also full of lawyer whammies like “Nostradamus clearly suggests…” (which, also, I was too young to hear), Welles sternly predicted a nuclear doomsday, originating from the Middle East, brought on by an alliance of Muslims and Russians — “could be possible” — sometime between 1994 and 1999.
To me, a latchkey who watched too much TV news, and witnessed the Iranian revolution alone on the couch, plus was living through Cold War-era nuclear drills, what I heard was: We’re all gonna die!” Just like the Milrgram experiment, this sage-sounding man who looked the part, the guy who said “we shall serve no wine before it’s time” — he said it. And, worse still, he had found this ancient text from an amazing soothsayer who was “apparently” never wrong. I mean, what could go wrong… EXCEPT EVERYTHING! Oh my God, we’re all gonna die!
BTW, I had no idea this was an encore performance; that this cat had already pulled this stunt once, years before, convincing people Martians were landing with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast. But I won’t get fooled again.
Anyway, now, here it is 2026, and Gaza is still a hot-spot oscillating in and out of war, and America is at the cusp once again with Iran, and while tensions with Russia aren’t what they were in 1981, all the “peace dividend” nonsense after the 1991 collapse has also long since abated… and… to quote Kanye (the old Kanye) “We wasn't supposed to make it past twenty-five — joke's on you, we still alive.”
Forty-nine percent of the time it’s right all the time, and this is how about 25% of me feels about all the fear mongering going on right now with AI. As old news editors used to say, “If it bleeds, it leads,” and nothing sells better than Armageddon. A whole bunch of religions have made lots of money off that one. That’s the cranky old me. The one who turned 55 last week feels that way. Fads, like hula-hoop = always stupid. And, really, why should I care, anyway — I don’t have another 50 years left for that matter. The decade challenge told me so.
The Wall Street guy in me says: we’ve seen this movie before, and it’s Y2K all over again. The most over-hyped thing since the dotcom bubble, AI still needs to overshoot, crash and correct. Then, maybe a decade after the shakeout, will come the serious technology. I mean, duh, we’re not all using Netscape today — an open source revolutionary (yay, I knew that!). Well, I am using Firefox, but that’s only because I disdain Microsoft, Amazon, Google & Apple (MAGA) — monopolies all — and I work at an OSS foundation.
Another part of me says, I should get Claude to write some code that scrapes Mastodon, LinkedIn and news feeds for people talking about OSS. Because those are the people I want to get to know. Plus, being the first dude on Wall Street, circa 1996, to use VBA (from Microsoft, grrrr) has continued to pay dividends to this day — 30 years later. Like Ozempic, I think I’ll do that.
And, one final bit of me says, Didn’t you see the Terminator, dummy - that was as real as ^%$#! Gun to head, I think “probably” (lawyer word), the future will hold all the above: over-hyped; good to adopt early; yet to crash; and someday, after I’m long gone, will wipe out all the humans. The remainder of my attention — which I realize this sums to more than 100% — says: Oh no, I managed to shirk another week without using that DELL laptop and Patrick’s gonna be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and me Sarah Connor, when I show up Monday with this Mac in my hand. But, that’s not a Saturday problem, nor is the AI apocalypse. Have a great weekend.
