When neural networks appeared, I felt: “Finally. I’ve been waiting for this. Intuitively, it’s as if I’d been familiar with this phenomenon since childhood—and now it has finally materialized.” And it’s not the first time I’ve had the sense that the future has finally caught up with me. Only briefly, in episodes—and I love those moments—when it feels as though a synchronization occurs between me and the world. But then the feeling returns that I am somehow ahead of my time. And with it comes a nostalgia for the future, and the anticipation of the moment when yet another human invention will once again give me the feeling that time has caught up with me.
Sometimes I come across questions in various questionnaires: “What time would you like to live in?” I suppose I should have been born sometime around 2082 (rather than 1982).
Many people are frightened by the future; technology scares them, and they write dystopias about it. I, on the other hand, am frightened when people try to resurrect the past. Things like, “Our ancestors lived this way—let’s live the same way and we’ll be happy.” Under that guise, they usually attempt to revive something unpleasant (for example, ways of life from long ago in which people lived in unfreedom, violence, and hardship). It’s strange that people don’t understand that it’s impossible to bring back into life something that no longer corresponds to present realities. Something may have worked fifty years ago because it fit the conditions of life at the time; now it doesn’t—and it won’t take root.
By the way, I don’t like traditions. None at all. I hardly have any personal traditions either. Nor do I have “little things dear to the heart”—objects that carry emotional memory. The only personal tradition I have is hanging one new Christmas ornament on the tree before each New Year and making a wish. I understand that it’s silly, but there’s something warm in it for me. Beyond that, there seems to be nothing else like it…
