Last week’s newsletter was about what makes us human—and what makes us crab-like. The idea came from an article I read called “Homo Crustaceous,” by paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield.
Beyond exploring a cultural obsession with crabs throughout human history, Garfield makes a surprising case for our similarity to these intertidal scavengers with an exoskeleton:
Firstly, humans do live in something like an intertidal zone: the turbulence and inescapable betweenness of our lives as we move in and out of the ‘virtual’ world. And, secondly, we encase ourselves in exoskeletons more literally every day as we become increasingly supported and defined by our technologies.
If our technologies are leading us away from what it means to be human, how can we find our way back? What does it even mean to be human? Singer-songwriter Will Varley provides at least one answer in his new song, “Machines Will Never Learn to Make Mistakes Like Me“:
Part of being human is being imperfect. We might say that our mistakes and failures lead us into a future that’s more human than crab-like.
Some friends of ours, the Stiflers, have a wall calendar by artist Nikki McClure. Each month features a word and image McClure cut from a single sheet of black paper. August’s word is “dissolve.” With all the ways our digital technologies might be evolving us as we move into the future, McClure’s word choice makes me think we might do better dissolving back into nature. Maybe that’s an action we can take to become more human too.
Last week I put together two playlists that express these contrasting sentiments: 1) my crab mix – A Digital Evolve? and 2) my human mix – A Natural Dissolve. You can read the rest of the newsletter here and listen to the playlists below. I hope you enjoy!
