I'm tired of working in tech but fortunately (or not) it's my hobby so even if I retired I would still be doing all the techy things at home on my 17 'puters (loose count). Plus being the IT Guy for several extended families. I'm live. I'm nationwide. But, I do plan to do more art, music, gardening, etc.
Years ago, before Web 3.0, my Mom decided she wanted a computer to do email and genealogy. I bought her one. In one of her first sessions she held the mouse about 8 inches above the mousepad and asked why nothing was happening (shades of Star Trek). When I was showing the family some pictures featuring water on my laptop she said, "It looks so real!", and kept poking the screen with her finger, which produced those colorful (diffraction?) patterns, exclaiming, "It's like water!". I kept saying, "Mom, stop", until my older brother said, "Mom, I think he wants you to stop poking the screen like that."
Even basic computer use is hard for older folks. I can't imaging what they are going through now. I get frustrated every day with the crap we have to deal with, and I'm an IT Guy. Don't even talk to me about AI.
I wouldn't be surprised if Yudkowsky would agree that the initial creation of "Information Technology" was an almost direct stepping stone (in evolutionary terms) on the path to AI, which in turn (he argues and I agree) will lead us towards superintelligence. I suppose that Kurzweil might take this even further, arguing that the path was set as soon as an early hominin picked up a stick and intentionally drew an arrow towards berry bushes in the ground.
When I was six my parents got me a 26" Schwinn single-speed bike. It was as tall as I was. I rode it until college, doing things that were heretofore unknown to science. IT WAS GREAT.
In a parallel universe, this thread is about the Beatles, where you woke up from the dream, found your way downstairs, had a coffee and somebody replied to your post.
At one point in the nineties, while furiously coding a seminal eCommerce app, my friend/boss walked up behind me and said, "Mr. Zoon, you're typing wildly on the keyboard with nothing happening on the screen." I had lost focus to my editor several minute before and being a non-touch-typist hadn't noticed. A few years later, farther into the eCommerce thing, a stubborn bug had held up things for a couple of weeks, Again, my boss/friend walked up behind me and pointed out that I had misspelled a variable name in a certain section of code. The good old days, heh. The code I wrote resulted in a multiple-award-winning product that outsold our competitor's products so quickly that they removed their products from the market. I bought a truck and a house.
