Whenever I get left behind on a hike, an outing to the park, or maybe a trendy neighborhood—-I get irrationally angry. I have zero tolerance for people who will not wait for me, even if I am to blame for stopping to take a photo or look in the window of a shop. I don’t just get angry, I get downright mean and nasty about it. I’ve learned so much about Kin Lane over the last 25 years that when he gets angry like this I know there is some deep seated emotional reason to blame which has next to no relationship with this moment where I am getting angry. So anytime I feel this emotion repeatedly, I roll up my sleeves and get to work digging at what is going on under the hood of Kin Lane.
Getting left behind a couple of times recently, having my mother pass away, and repeatedly being threatened that I will be left behind by the artificial intelligence crowd online has left me with the hood open on Kin Lane once again, forcing me to confront what my emotions are on “being left behind”. First, let’s scratch at the root of why I get so angry. This is something I’ve traced back to the 1970s and being left alone with my two older brothers. From the age of 5-10 I was regularly left home with my two older brothers who “babysat me”. My brothers are 4 and 5 years older than me-—so of the age where they “legally” for 1970s standards are able to look after me. The only problem was that the oldest one’s favorite pastime was tormenting and beating the shit out of my other older brother. I was “mostly” spared this abuse, but it didn’t lessen the effect of being left at home with the two of them on a regular basis.
I don’t talk to either of my Trump supporting brothers anymore, and I don’t regret this situation one bit. In their absence I have done a huge amount of work on removing their voices from my head, and these characters two being a source of my aggression and anxiety. I can confidently say that I did not like being left at home with them. It terrified me. It left me feeling helpless. I wasn’t big enough to do anything about it, until about 15 years later where I grew bigger than my oldest brother and was able to kick the shit out of him. I thought that this change in my height and strength was the end of it, but the way that I feel aggressive and inclined towards fighting whenever I am left behind revealed to me that there was much more work to be done. I don’t like being left behind, but as an adult I have made it a core tool in my toolbox to celebrate when others leave me behind as well as taking pride in moving forward so confidently that I end up leaving people behind—-I am guessing you can search for the phrase “left behind” on my site search and find a number of posts dedicated to the subject.
My two older brothers weren’t the only source of this anxiety. I’d say there are two other root causes that were very much the soundtrack of my youth, which I think also unknowingly plays out in the minds of people who are artificial intelligence believers. It was always trumpeted by the church in America that if you don’t go to heaven you would be left behind. There was a christian version of this message that permeated movies, television, and the communities around me, but the echo of this version which I was reminded of daily by people around me was about being left behind after a nuclear holocaust. The community I lived in had a unique apocalyptic view on this one, based on beliefs that our jet stream came from the ocean and if Los Angeles or New York was bombed we would be left behind to survive in the aftermath. This was the narrative of my childhood. Our entire existence was building, stockpiling, and prepping for the day we would be left behind by nuclear war and would be forced to survive — living each day wasn’t about that day, it was about always preparing to be left behind.
As I began making a career for myself, venturing out into the world, I was regularly bombarded with another variation of being left behind from all of those I was leaving behind. Ironically one of the most vocal was my oldest brother who liked to remind me that I had an obligation to my blood family, and that I could never leave them behind or there would be a huge price to pay. Similarly I got this from some of my best friends who I hold very close to my heart, but who were also junkies…like me. My friends would always visit me and see that I was heading places literally and metaphorically and they always would state that I could never leave my friends behind—-because they were family. I heard this chorus for about a solid decade until eventually these people were far enough in my rear view mirror that I was confident that I had left them behind. The people are easier to leave behind than the guilt of leaving these people behind. I would much rather have some of them with me, but they had proven incapable of moving forward in any way.
While finding my way out in the world with my best friend and partner in crime I found myself learning more about how technology gets wielded in the name of education. This awareness came on the heels of learning that conservative phrases like the “clear skies” and “no child left behind” were actually dangerous threats to our environment and children. Over the course of a decade I learned the ways in which technologists find affinity with awful people who were looking to privatize education, defund education for black and brown children, and were targeting the teachers union because they share a hatred and distrust of women. People who wielded messages like “no child left behind” were very good at co-opting messages to destroy education and hurt people who depend on education as a lifeline for leaving a violent and abusive childhood behind. I have taken this awareness and applied it to every industry I study as part of my work as the API Evangelist, and it helps inform me about why AI is so interested in selling to schools—-to ensure nobody can be left behind from its devastating effect.
One of the people I left behind during this journey, was my Mother. Ironically, my mother was a school teacher by trade, but that is a story for another time. With her recently leaving this world I found myself pondering what it means to be left behind on earth after your mother and father both have exited. This is part of the inspiration for sitting down and writing this story. I wanted to process all of this from my youth and revisit my journey towards 2025, but I also wanted to understand why I was getting so irrationally angry when an artificial intelligence believer tells me I am going to be left behind. I wanted to understand why I would get angry at that statement, but also explore why they would feel the need to make this statement in the first place. I am confident that their reasoning lies in one of the numberous other situations I have shared about why people throughout my life have wielded this phrase. It is a threat. It is based in fear and yanking peoples chains around fear. It is violent, but this new kind of bureaucratic violence that is being scaled and normalized through the Internet right now—-enforced using APIs. It isn’t much different than the violence I endured as a child, just modernized and at a digital scale.
So….why is it bad to be left behind? Isolation. Fear. Violence. Is there safety in the future? Is there safety in keeping up with pack? I am pretty confident that I want to be left behind by artificial intelligence. I see AI and the Internet just like I see the automobile. It is a future that didn’t and won’t pencil out. I am fine with getting out of the car here, or having the car leave without me. I don’t believe that the AI skills are the skills of the future. To quote Kate Crawford, artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent. I am fine with being left behind. However, I get irrationally angry when people are telling me that I am going to be left behind. I am doing the work on these feelz, but that doesn’t mean the feeling has gone away. Especially when someone using it to try and yank my chain. To help me in this work I will keep writing about what it means to be left behind, or what it means to move into the future (or not). I want to understand more about why people wield the phrase “left behind”. What is their intent? What is the source? But please remember, if you too are left behind, I am here, and I will call grandma to come over and help keep us safe.
