John Haymaker

“The Forbidden Fruit Fights Back” by John Haymaker

A Quirky Take on Data Overload, Entropy, and AI


When a Microsoft 1990s advertising campaign asked, “Where do you want to go today?” Our minds raced. Possibilities seemed limitless. I just never thought anyone’s answer would be batshit crazy, but that seems to be our final destination. Cognitive-load research clocks the average adult processing nearly 34 GB of information daily, outpacing our neural architecture’s capacity.

From a frontier for discovery, the web transformed into a massive online data dump, burdening the human mind with too much information everywhere all at once. We got sidetracked, and Silicon Valley capitalized, turning every click, scroll, pause and search into a commodity sold to marketing firms. Humans became subordinate to profit. To maximize their bounty of data, they’ve addicted us to an Internet of Things, no household gadget too trivial to wire up and shadow. If we look away, clickbait sucks us back in.

As a result, many of us have surrendered to endless scrolling, binge-watching and algorithmic echo chambers. I worry that entropy, the curse of the universe that trends toward chaos and disorder, has tripped the circuit breaker of rational thinking. When even Elon has gone all crackbrained, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Fortunately, humanity has a fallback: artificial intelligence. All mankind’s knowledge sits in microprocessor warehouses, ready to perform in seconds calculations that would confound our feeble “lizard brains” for eons. AI might shoulder the heavy lifting for us while we Twitter, troll and follow.

Despite warnings from scholars that AI poses existential risks to humanity, tech gurus seem giddy for a post-human world, willing to risk AI wiping out humanity. Before that worst-case scenario unfolds, however, entropy may still have the final say. If Eve’s “forbidden fruit” has left us choking, the inherent volume of data stored in AI may well trip its circuit breakers exponentially faster than ours did.

Hey, ChatGPT, what is the probability for that? 

John Haymaker currently surfs the web from New Hampshire. A former educator and programmer, his essays and fiction appear in print and online in various journals, including Hawaii Pacific Review, The Bookends Review, The Hooghly Review, Quibble Lit, Cosmic Double and New Pop Lit. Find out more at https://johnhaymaker.com/. 

(main page portfolio image c/o richard rogers partnership)

A Short Excerpt from “Quest of the Globules” by John Haymaker

NEW POP FICTION!

The Globules pinpointed the sound’s source as a jumble of radio signals emanating from planet Earth, and they thereupon commenced to traverse the broad expanse of space-time in microseconds toward the sound. On the way, they binge-watched Netflix, Prime, YouTube and learned our languages, even dead ones, consuming all knowledge thus far attained on earth.

They grew keen on pop culture and acculturated to Earth’s vibe well before landing. They devoured social media, discovered Twitter, enjoyed absolutely everything posted on Facebook – sucking it up, clicking virtual Likes with licks of their millions of tongues. 

On Earth, a din of radio static grew loud as an echo chamber. Scientists anticipated something colossal targeted earth. They theorized meteors or comets – and issued warnings. Then the tweets commenced from @intergalactic, Nimble’s Twitter handle: We’re coming from Globiliad @earth #peace #friendship – followed by an array of pics of their dazzling celestial procession. On Monday, Likes on Facebook grew exponentially. By Tuesday, sociologists gave up providing explanations. By Wednesday, theoretical physicists weighed in with a theory of a dark matter effect – maybe even an effect of dark energy, for all they knew.

(WHAT?!!) COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!