When I was a kid, back in the Mesozoic, life was ­simpler.

Take health. Back then, either you had the sniffles or you died in an alien invasion. That was it.

No ambiguity. No nuance. No seductive distractions. You stayed on point.

Now, people get contagious inflammatory toe fungus anemeitis. Ask yourself: Really, is the world a better place now?

I’m halfway through writing Nothing To Do — Life After the Work Stops. The subject is human prospects, practical and existential, after AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and robotics perform virtually every human function and task, and people wake up every day to an uninterrupted horizon of … nothing, and are forced to make meaning of time itself.

The perfectability of the technology, while ongoing, is so imminent that the gosh ‘n’ golly reaction itself seems passé.

A year or two ago, Chinese sexbots or “companions” (female, of course) were introduced. Says one headline: “China’s sex doll factories are building thousands of hyper-realistic robots, including child-sized dolls which are flooding America.”

Technology’s utopian promise. Gosh ‘n’ golly!

Consider the existential consequences for ­individuals and for society.

Who are we if we’re doing nothing? To imagine that everyone will wake up to spend the day fussing in the garden or resuming PhD research is disingenuous.

I........

© Times Colonist