Consider

I am writing this as I'm waiting for my plane at Schiphol Airport, sitting by an empty gate among a lot of rats. I will have a connecting flight in two hours or so, then I hope to be home in about twelve hours. This much free time is not healthy for anyone, because having nothing to do for half a day is a great excuse for my brain wander. Mostly, I am thinking of what I am about to do in the next few days. More specifically, minor details such as flying, browsing the web and similar.

The thoughts arrive and oh my, we are a wild species. Well, considering the other meaning of wild, that sounds weird. I'm embarrassed to let you know that I had to google "are humans wild species" and I found myself in a Quora feed. Apparently we are not. Sad human noises.

Anyways, what I mean is, we have so many concepts we take for granted that are insane when you take a second to consider. We often glorify nature and usually bash on human-made structures, as we only hear of the environmental damage we cause as a species in the news. Unless we have a major advancement, we don't take time to appreciate what humans do. I am younger than many of the things we invented and I am very late to the party. That would be awkward if I hosted a party to celebrate the invention of the wheel now.

Planes. They don't need an introduction. They are incredible. We fly tens of tonnes full of humans ten thousand feet above the ground at eight hundred kilometers per hour. This comes from a species that can barely jump fifty centimeters and run out of breath after ten jumps. It's absurd. It's insane. Imagine walking up to Caesar and say this will be possible in the future. You'll make good lion feed if not jailed in a mental asylum.

Speaking of which, I always wonder what would happen if we took a historical figure and bring to today. I cannot imagine their awe (or disgust) towards what we achieved. My man Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi was exiled because he tried to fly. He would be joyous to know millions fly every year now! But would he comprehend all that is going on? I'm sure most of it would look like magic. They have been around since I was born but it still does look like magic to me. Maybe it is, who knows?

Anything tooth related. How did this turned from a torture method into a simple medical process? "Oh yes, we will drill through your tooth by destroying your nerves, cut some meat beneath your tooth and fill the gap with concrete, all while you are fully awake." It sounds so brutal when you simplify these operations. I would guess they are equally scary for the patient pre-operation today and then, but it's virtually painless now. We say "I will have a root canal operation" and this sentence does not do justice to the thousands of years of medical evolution on this topic.

Roads. Every time I have to take a long road trip, I will cry inside because I know that my seat and my bottom will unite into a singular entity pretty soon. On the other hand, I will be on the road for twelve hours. Non-stop. Someone built this! Someone took the time to lay bricks or pour asphalt onto the link between any point A and any point B. My school and my house used to be 1300 kilometers apart. While the distance is impressive, it gets much more impressive to think some of this road goes through, over and around mountains. And this is one road. Take a moment to consider how much road there is on earth. The sheer size makes me dizzy.

Not to mention, we went to space! Few psychopaths still orbit the earth on a floating piece of metal. The distances we went through to feed our curiosity and advance further research is notable. And hey, for all we know, all residents of Mars happen to be robots. Maybe one day we will also conquer this android world!

Internet. Not only did we manage to put a computer inside our pockets, but we also managed to link all of these computers together. How it can transfer information through air is beyond me; but on a global scale, everything is connected via cables. Yes, also through oceans. There are massive cables of thousands of kilometers in length going through the largest blobs of water we know, just so that you can search for cat videos from the United States while laying on your bed in Madagascar.

Come to think of it, every time you click on a link, you may be sending a piece of light across half of the earth until the page loads. I'm no expert at how it works so someone please explain to me as if I'm five:

How do these not interfere with each other?
How does it know where to go?
Where is the internet?
And how much does it weigh?
What would it taste like if it were a cake flavor?
Why'd you only call me when you're high? (context)

I won't deny there are a lot of things we did horribly, but that's all I see on the news and around anyways. I don't believe anything is pure black or white, so I wanted to take some time to appreciate the good things we do. With my limited knowledge of what's going on, I cannot even imagine what the next big thing will be. Time will show that, but it will probably overshadow those other things we take for granted. Any guesses on what it will be?

Bonus: We can never know, but here is a guess. The invention below is randomly generated. Let's see how accurate it is:

An electric kettle that can knit.

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antiphona on 11 June 2023

I remember the silence amongst a group of people when someone asked "Can anyone explain how a microwave really works?" Our ability to accept things as they are without question, being surrounded by these magical artifacts in our lives, is quite wild to think about in itself!