Indemnitas

By Jane Chin

We are rewriting Fables. The hare beats the tortoise and wins the race. The farmer who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs gets rich by selling future options against golden eggs in the commodity market.

We can outsource the mining of ores of our experience and pre-load Fast-Pass tickets with academic degrees. Getting our hands dirty in the grease of life has become an unproductive use of our time or talent.

We have coaches, mentors, experts, and gurus for all shapes of ambition and sizes of success; they have failed so we may be spared from making the same mistakes.

We have hacks and best practices, pearls of wisdom and golden nuggets, spaghetti diagrams and expert systems.

We are warned of the dangers of not saying no, not delegating, and not developing along measured and metered milestones.

We blame the process, not the person!

We have Autotext.

Search engines predict our queries based on all queries others have posed before us; we need type but a few characters before algorithms tell us what we must be looking for.

We have support groups for our ailments, charities for our passions, and consultants hailing to guide us to blog, write a book, create our personal brand, find a job, start a business, be better parents, rejuvenate our bodies, sculpt our faces, sharpen our minds, and turn into a desirable lover… all in (an odd number of) Easy Steps! Guaranteed! Or Your Money Back! But Wait! There’s More!

We have apps to track how well and by how much we inch toward the newest and best "us", programmed with pop-up affirmations and course-correction tips.

We give our toddlers an electronic tablet that accepts commands from the chubbiest clumsiest fingers; the tablet can read them a bed-time story. It has no qualms about reading the same story or part of the story over and over again. It does not lose its temper or rolls its eyes or do anything human parents do then regret. It will sing soothing lullabies and turn itself off at the designated time.

Regulations have morphed into "What Not to Do". Training has transformed into warnings of "How Not to Do". Laws are amended and stitched into The Modern Prometheus of "This Can Happen to You if You Do What You're Not Supposed to Do". Attorneys and insurance companies are standing by with legal salves and settlements.

We have Autocorrect.

Erasers, corrective ribbons, and bottles of liquid white-out are relegated to the shelves of obscurity: obsolete, forgotten, artifacts of days when we are reminded that we make mistakes that need correcting.

We have built a world where mistakes need not take root, where we need commit nothing until we press "Submit", take it out of "Beta", or double-click "Yes!" then "Yes! I'm sure!"

Welcome to Indemnitas.