As we open our eyes into existence, we see the world around us, our mothers, and a world that is incomprehensible and infinite. Boundless and immense our brains can’t catch up to the photons, information beaming into our eyes. Metaphysically we are born into a world of things we can’t see as well, radio-waves, UV light, heat radiation. And even beyond that societal expectations, rules of engagement, laws. We are welcomed into a world that we’re expected to catch up and supposedly, one day, maybe run.

In this infinite, boundless, and ever changing universe, I identify myself as a traveler in its currents. A jellyfish translucent and reflective but alive deep in the oceans of space and time. This doesn’t mean that you can’t move or change, but that while I can try to move I recognize the scale of my existence against the backdrop of all time that has come before me and all the time that has yet to exist or for me to perceive. Yet, in my limited perception I recognize my own will, and even against the infinity of time, I can say I am here, now.

It’s in this ocean of lessons, revelations, wonders that I am only a student. That’s all we can be. Always curious, trying to understand a little more about where we are now. Even if the information we consume can’t be fully understood yet, I believe it’s one of humanities highest purposes. The quest for knowledge, not because we have to, but because we can and because we can understand we should. This idea of understanding and learning and knowledge powers everything I do.

But learning isn’t everything, just like prometheus not content with just knowledge of something, we must act. Praxis. What good is hoarding knowledge if you don’t share it. I believe that any kind of sharing is a testament of the faith you have in others, a testament in the power of humanity and our ability to connect and evolve. It’s scary sharing one’s thoughts to others, what if all of my perceptions and ideas do not match yours or what if yours don’t match mine? I think this conflict may well be the reason for our existence.

Action help us change even in the fleeting moments we have. This action usually comes in the form of evolution, and with evolution, technology. Fitting for prometheus, controlling light, energy, and electricity, funnily enough has this self-obsessed tendency to make us feel like gods.

As we figure out our own relationships with our own creations, our responsibility, and our curiosity, we must never forget that technology isn’t an end on itself. It’s just a tool to get us to the next thing. For all the talks about accelerationism, we must remember that a hammer is not a tool to place nails, it’s a tool to help us remember. Pictures on walls remind us of windows into the past, of places that were, of images that don’t exist. The tools we build should solve more problems than we create. Always starting with humanity and then thinking about the trends, the frameworks, the technologies. We must ask why we build what we build.

I care about not loosing ourselves in digital worlds made of our own device. Instead of trying to understand the world we can perceive or the world we inherited, we instead ignore it, and discard it. We build worlds of our own without understanding the one we got, the ones we create, or even ourselves. Lost in simulations, simulacra and our digital tools replacing our ability to think, and our ability to understand each other and ourselves.

Our actions, our quest for knowledge should not be about making a mark in time immemorial. Our actions have ripples but time will erase everything. Just like before we existed and long after we’re gone there will be no visible mark of us being here. At best only echoes. Time erodes every legacy, and even Ozymandias is lost to the sands of time. Monuments and fear of oblivion is irrational, our existence and our quest for knowledge and creation of technology can’t be governed by fear, it must be an act of faith, and an act of hope.

Being forgotten, or knowing that at one point no one will know who I was or maybe what I did or knew is not defeatist or depressing. It’s a call to action because our worth isn’t measure by the monuments we leave behind, but by the impacts we have in the lives of others now. Just like stars at the start of the Big Bang, photons traveling infinitely to the corners of the universe, so can we leave footprints in the existence of others and make invisible ripples in the pond of all existence. But our names will be forgotten, and our monuments will be sand, we should be so lucky that we were able to impact the life of someone else and know it while we both were alive, both traveling through time.

It’s a balancing act, all we do will be lost, but our impact is important because all that matters is the now, and the now belongs to us. We may be like photons but we are more than photons. We may be like a jellyfish in the infinite of space but we can still swim. I believe in humanity, and I believe that the future, as dark or as bright as it may seem, can be affected by us. It’s our responsibility while we are here, in this moment of the universe and time, to help each other and to better ourselves and the world around us.

This is not a manifesto of my philosophy. It’s a sketch on a diner napkin. A fleeting thought of what I believe at this moment in time. And as time changes me and I change time, it may change too.