Imagine a 10-year-old in 2090 looking back at the social life of their grandparents from 2040.
What will they see?
Pictures and reels of them on Instagram following some trend that was big back then, the videos they've created on YouTube using AI video and voice tools, a Twitter profile filled with AI-generated content, recorded videos of their AI avatars teaching a course on app development, or even an OF account!
The kid will have access to a ton of videos and content about their grandparents from the internet.
But, the kid will have no way of seeing or understanding the real character or voice of their grandparents?
Imagine this for an entire generation in the future. It's scary.
When they look back, all they would see is a fabricated version of ourselves. A version where want to be seen as the happiest, sexiest, and the richest.
When the internet came into existence, it acted as a huge time capsule. It recorded every thought, idea, and interaction. For the first time in history, we could see how people like us thought, reacted, and behaved when they hung out with their friends, came across a social issue, or faced a personal crisis.
It was a treasure trove of information. It was a crowdsourced version of our history that gave room for very little manipulation (which was very common in previous centuries, as very few had the power to decide what goes to the future generations).
But, it's starting to fade.
Over the last decade, we've started fabricating how we'd want to be seen and heard. We go on holidays and buy gadgets we can't afford, we open up about our private lives to our 'audience' and we created a ton of AI-generated text, audio, and video - all for what? Social capital, fame, and money.
Today, the internet is being filled with millions of pieces of AI content every minute. And every piece of that content is history for our future generations. But, rather than it saying about who we are, it will show them an illusion of how we lived in 2024.
Despite having free will and freedom to do what we want, a majority of us do the same thing. In the process of making money and attaining social status, we're losing our conscience.
It's sad, but it's true.