Welcome to the Revolution

Alright guys, I have lost it. Like deep-well, wormhole, lost it. I exist in another place and time. I am so intimately immersed in 1936 that when I go out, it’s all I see. It is hard to describe, but hopefully I can show it. I take photos everyday as my brain swims in this Rodinal, hoping my project ‘36’ continues to develop to the point I keep sharing.

Westward.

Meanwhile, I am back in San Francisco tonight, and I am taking myself to a piano bar. Bring a book, have a drink.

I did something similar last night, sitting at a bar in the Ferry Building after strolling along the wharf that would have been so full of longshoremen and ships and chaos in the midst of the labor protests of the 1930s.

I took a seat at the bar and made the deliberate choice to stow my phone away and just be there, uncomfortable and alone like people used to be. A slightly disheveled and clearly exasperated man entered and grabbed the chair next to me, asking the woman behind the bar how long they’d be open until. “Seven, seven thirty–ish” she said, clearly making the rules up as she went. No doubt, she owned the place.

“Good,” he said. “I’m the idiot who can’t read a ferry schedule and my boat just left.” I laughed sympathetically, and so the conversation began.

His name was Kevin. He’s an IT auditor who’d just come off a training session for his company on how to audit AI for insurance purposes (which, he humbly admitted, was a kettle of fish that wasn‘t entirely cooked). Technology and AI - words that feel like staples in the name of every job title in a city where self driving cars dominate. It was exactly the conversation you hope, and expect, to have in San Francisco.

We spoke at length about technology (his expertise), media (mine), and the quickly changing world we are all expediently trying to get our arms over and around in every industry. It was an exciting, daunting and human conversation. It was also uncomfortable; it was 1936.

That is when Alan Turing developed the concept of the Turing Machine, which laid the foundation for artificial intelligence and modern day computing by introducing the idea that a machine could execute algorithms. His was a time of turbulence and dread and escapism and opportunity and recovery and the unknown. ‘36 is all around us.

I ought to go to that piano bar now, but let me leave you with this if I can: embrace discomfort. Embrace the discomfort of going out alone, of putting the phone away, of talking to strangers, of existing through a time of rapid and overwhelming change. Remember that we are in a revolution, but that revolution itself is nothing new; it only manifests in new ways.

If you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, discomfort becomes the norm and is easier to process, while comfort becomes the exception to the rule. More importantly though, if you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, you can get in touch with the only thing that really matters in times of uncertainty and change: your humanity. Stay human. Talk to humans. Help humans out.

At least until the AI robots take over.

:)

X Ali