Whe rules who here? It’s not just the traffic light men in Berlin who ask themselves that question when there’s a crisis, like it is now, or actually all the time. After all, they are dealing with a person-to-person situation. A starting position that you can only envy. Because the coalition that is making life increasingly difficult for us is one between man and machine. For a long time, the first group thought they were the undisputed sovereign. Stupid who thought it would go on forever. The bots are now claiming government responsibility for themselves.
Have you ever made a rough estimate of how much time it takes to assure a machine that you’re human? The Internet, and everything you do there, has switched to reflexive turbo mode. No attempt to register, nothing, can do without a round of questions to find out more about your nature. “Are you human? I do not think so. Prove it!” the computer taunts us, forcing us to type in blurry rows of numbers or click on photos with traffic lights and no males, like a trained dancing bear. Recently, a booking platform wanted to get taxis assigned five times in a row. And in order to buy a simple train ticket, the computer asks us, quite frankly, to check in on being human. After all, the intentions are no longer hidden. So we delete cookies that we never asked for. We struggle with pop-up windows that think they can sell us something if they hide the close tick well enough. And now this too.
This captcha thing is supposed to make the internet safer somehow. Sadly, no one is interested in the battered egos of those who are no longer taken seriously as a threat, i.e. as an equal opponent. The bot is a wolf to the bot. We’re just toothless tigers. But maybe the internet is just so annoying that everyone can finally look forward to the update, the metaverse. In the current commercial, one marvels at doctors healing knees and students petting mammoths. This is perfect world. Where man and machine are finally one. Transhumanists of all countries, unite.