“Oh, what a piece of work is man.”

Have you ever just stopped and looked around you and marveled at everything around you?

Unless you are a member of a remote tribe somewhere in the world, in those few untouched places, the era of the human-built is all around you. Have you ever taken a moment and stopped what you were doing to simply observe your surroundings, and realize that everything which currently surrounds us has been invented and built by humans?

If you are at your desk in your office, the cube you are sitting in, the desk you are sitting at, the chair you are sitting in, the building your cube is in, the road that runs past that building, the thousands of cars which pass that building every day, even the city that the building is in, has been imagined and invented by some human at some point.

Have you ever stopped to think that if it weren’t for humanity, inventing things, that we’d never be able to order the car to pick us up and drop us off somewhere else, or have food seamlessly delivered to you via a few taps on a glass screen?

Everything that surrounds us, everything that gives us the life we have now, replete with laptops, smartphones, video games, streaming video, podcasts, advanced medicines, longer lives, healthier bodies, healthier foods, hot coffee, brownies and the keyboard that I’m typing this blog post on right at this very minute, was invented by a human.

Look around and see if there is any of the natural world left around you? Maybe there’s a plant on your desk or in the corner. Or it is just an excellent imitation in plastic and rubber?

I’ve got a few cactus plants in my office, so I know that there is at least some real nature around me, but everything else, human-made.

We can’t go back to life without human-made things, and we can’t move forward into the future without continuing to allow humans to invent things. Brand new things, or things which are simply better than the current things out there. Sure, we may have too many things, but whose fault is that, the ones who invent the things, or those who want the things that they create.

Soon, we’ll have general artificial intelligence and quantum computing, yet another human invention.

I can never really understand people who think that our time in the sun is over once we start building smart AI.

If anything, humans will probably end up being even more essential and powerful, using these sophisticated machines to improve our lives even further.

Can’t figure out global warming? Build an AI to figure it out for us.

I simply don’t understand people’s dystopian views of the future – technology is simply a tool which can be used to improve humanity and its ability to invent, or the opposite. It’s up to us to continue to invent, to continue to improve ourselves, to continue to evolve ourselves into better humans, with or without technology. Humans are awesome, they have created some fantastic things, and they will continue to create amazing things.

Never underestimate the power of the human mind.