One More Week: Musing on Human Intelligence

 I'm thrumming with nervous energy after spending almost an entire semester focused on studying for comps.  My first exam will take place next Tuesday. Everything I look at is familiar to me, but I know it could always be more familiar. I find myself thinking a lot about human intelligence, especially as I stand on the threshold of an era when AI tools will be taken for granted. How we process and synthesize information is fundamentally changing.

Casting a shadow over a patch of spring starflowers, we are both uniquely present

Why does it matter whether I know a whole lot about Modern U.S. History, Race, Ethnicity, & Citizenship, and the Theory and Practice of Public History? It may not matter at all if I'm simply defined by my potential energy as an intellectual laborer. But, if my importance lies more in my unique position within my place and time-- within my true social networks, family ties, and professional connections-- then it matters whether I cultivate myself to be a better prism of understanding. As Brandon Sanderson recently said regarding the role of writers in a society with AI: "We are the art."

Perhaps this 21st century American iteration of our species fetishizes uniqueness. Perhaps we overemphasize the beauty of subjective perspectives. But if such a viewpoint brings joy, why not embrace it? I'll keep learning right now, because that's what I want to do. Because it helps me map my spacial and temporal territory, and it helps me center my joy. 

When this is all over, I will have climbed another mountain. I will have a new view from the top. My personal topography will have shifted, and the map of my life will have another node. And all the crossroads on that map, where my path intersects with others' paths, will be all the richer, more textured, more layered, more complex. And maybe "history" will gain something by it too.