Opposable Thumb

Hands held tools,
and tools made other tools.
We shaped stone, learned to control fire, built machines,
and eventually began to create something that could think for us.

Technology always seems to carry us forward.
Faster, farther, more precisely.
But what does it mean to move forward,
and where are we going?

We did not get here alone.

What we made was always
passed on to others, transformed, and made again.
Perhaps the development of civilization depended less
on any single remarkable ability
than on the ways our thoughts continued through one another.

Now machines learn, create, and respond.
As they begin to resemble us more and more,
perhaps we, too, are slowly beginning to resemble them.

Maybe what matters is not
how far we are able to go,
but what we carry with us along the way.

And who we go with.