Despite how removed from the physical world a piece of technology might appear, there is - and will always be - some physical object in a physical location maintained by a real humans without which that amazing technology would cease to function.
The physical substrate is as real as it gets. There will always be someone somewhere flipping breakers, hard-resetting systems & tightening loose connections. Go down the rabbit hole and at the bottom, you will find a human in the loop, a power plant, a server, fibre cable, etc.
This article tackles a blindspot I've also noticed when people talk about AI taking over the world in some extreme sense.The real world is as real as it gets. However, the physical systems that make modern life possible have become so transparent people take them for granted.
There's no law of physics that makes the power, water and telecommunications infrastructures operate non-stop. Entropy is the default state.Everything breaks sooner or later. There are physical infrastructures that only operate reliably due to continued maintenance by humans.
During Covid, it was amusing to see the attitude of the "email caste" towards working from home. They took the possibility of Zoom meetings for granted.I was working in telecoms then and the only reason WFH was possible was because I and millions of other people did not WFH.I did not miss a single hour of in-person work, liaising with field engineers and technicians, to keep telecoms installations operating as required.
It's a testament to the sheer success of humanity that the populace can afford to be unbelievably dismissive of the real world.
