Pubdate: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 Source: Truro Daily News (CN NS) Copyright: 2017 The Daily News Contact: http://www.trurodaily.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1159 Author: Jim Vibert Page: A2 POT'S JUST ONE SOLUTION FOR DIGITAL DISCONNECTION Legal pot was inevitable the moment society became inexorably bound to runaway technology. Friday, with a digital lifeline severed, pasty-faced, disoriented humans stumbled out of the disrupted dichotomy - separate connection - to join other disoriented, confused survivors wandering, lost and untethered, in the foreign world of a decade back. Sitting stoned alone in your backyard would clearly be a healthier psychological response. When everything depends on one thing, and that one thing is undependable, dupable and destructible, there needs to be a fallback, and "who gives a crap" is a viable option. By consensus, marijuana offers a relatively harmless trip to the desired abandon. Cellulus interruptus - of the kind endured hereabouts Friday - is a raindrop in a hurricane. Moderate cognizance as to what's going on confirms time on steroids. Before the Enlightenment, centuries passed without fundamental shifts in how folks lived. By the dawn of the 20th century, change on that scale occurred over two generations. Now, seven years is considered the duration of technological evolution so vast as to create new global realities. The exponential rate of change exceeds the human ability to adjust, leaving two possibilities. The course preferred by the deepest thinkers, whose books and essays most people do not allow themselves time to read, is a comparable revolution in the pace of human adaptation. Unfortunately, a necessary participant in the legal, educational and ethical acceleration of human capacity for adaptation is, help us all, government. Governments sail in wooden vessels wondering what strange, glinting objects leave thin threads of cloud in the sky. That, tragically, is a metaphor for democratic, legal and ethical station vis-a-vis technological celerity. Deluded "early adapters" scoff, secure in the fantasy that the latest techno-innovation is theirs to conquer. They need to join the techno-peasantry and get past denial. The truth is opposite. Technology is the conqueror. Our role is to surrender and offer fealty with vast monetary tribute. Legal access to calming relief is a rational response to a world you can't understand or catch. As fast as you run, your chances of gaining are nil, absent a full social bolt forward. The relentless march of science and obscene profits dictate that each technological advance spawns, within the lifespan of your average house mouse, another that renders the previous obsolete. Lest the reader concludes Silicone Valley alone controls the pace of the race, perish the thought. At places like John Hopkins U., advances in biotechnology collide and accelerate to a velocity that renders "innovation" a quaint perhaps antiquated term. While mortals wrestle with the moral and legal implications of sexting, the death of death is in the crosshairs of the bio-techno-brain thrust. Science fiction? Go smoke a joint. Back home, digital disruption triggers the restoration sequence. Unplug stuff or press buttons without prior knowledge as to their function. When that doesn't work, digest panic. Head for the internet to solve a phone problem or to the phone for an internet interruption. Except, service complaint management has been perfected by the telecoms. Indeed, that was right above "create reliable networks" on the priority list. The provider offers a toll-free number to call in case of interrupted phone service. There's a handy website to consult for internet disruption. Diabolical. Word that the province, even the region was united in division brought individual relief and communal anxiety. None of this is complicated, merely incomprehensible. In Nova Scotia, awareness that change is gonna come has kids learning computer code from the day their fresh faces arrive in the school house. The train left the station and we send our kids chasing it on foot and in the opposite direction. Nova Scotia's curriculum innovation is roughly the equivalent of training kids circa 1800 to shovel coal faster to feed the steam-fired industrial revolution, which began around 1760. By the time these kids graduate, coding, if not entirely automated by thinking machines, will be a career choice for stoners, alone in their backyards, fulltime. Teach the children well. Let them learn how to adapt to a world that changes fundamentally and irrevocably a couple of times each decade. Either that, or teach them how to build a better bong. - ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Vibert grew up in Truro and is a Nova Scotian journalist, writer and former political and communications consultant to governments of all stripes. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt