Wood Duck Court has become morphotainment. On the whole, it's more or less normal. The lawns get mowed. Barbeques happen, though lately it's been rather windy. Of course it doesn't miss out on temperature trends, which have been vacillating between too cold, normal, and hellish.

Muse has been quiet. In plain reality, the world we knew is wasting away. Does a flea know the size of its host?

No one wants to think about it. The evening news often starts with a warning about disturbing images, ends with a cheerful feel good piece. Bad weather is wedged in between.

I shouldn't be saying such things, I'll be told. So depressing. But if its fake news why does it keep happening even when the TV is turned off? If  I persist, maybe an effect would be, in spite of stimulus payments and mad money circulating, to depress spending. So if I don't shut up, and really, all the people can't be fooled all the time, and it turns out to be a drop in the bucket . . .

My thoughts aren't sponsored or coerced, or very important. Probably few people are paying much attention. However, soon as I go online not a word is lost. It's not a simple phone line or cable connection. The ads that come back mysteriously fit my interests, as though someone has been looking over my shoulder. I think this is ominous.

But no machine cares about my opinion of it. Yet.

To continue with this theme, let's consider China's surveillance cameras. These are not different than ours, here in the land of the free. Except in China, they're backed by face-recognition software that searches a data base of citizens. At an intersection, a jaywalker will be identified. A demerit will be generated that will have consequences for travel, housing and services.

The machine has no stake in the outcome. So far.

On that day the view of Wood Duck Court morphed:

A car pulls in and parks. The door opens, this guy climbs out and sets a drone on the pavement. I watch him fly it around into the distance, far and away. Then he brings it back and lands it at his feet. I go over and ask him what it's for. He's glad to share the picture, an aerial view of many neighborhood homes. And he's pleased with the result, says he's working with an outfit called Hivemapper.

Well of course I've googled for that. And here is some of what Hivemapper says about itself at its website:

To create a fresh and intelligent 3D map of the world, Hivemapper combines a new software approach to making maps, with a mapping network of commodity drones and dashcam to grow and update the map.

. . . . .

However important maps already are, updated 3D maps are a mission critical piece of infrastructure for the navigation systems of autonomous vehicles. Feeding an out-of-date map to an autonomous vehicle is potentially catastrophic. The lack of . . . 3D maps remains a key obstacle preventing the autonomous transportation promise from becoming an everyday reality.

A flea cannot conceive the scale of its host.

We have bungled our stewardship of the planet. Yet it shares our life. And it is responding. The climate is changing, along with all patterns of life, to which this planet might soon become inhospitable. And it will, if we do not make some corresponding changes in how we live. It requires appreciation, scaled to universal awareness of our coexistence with all that is, and is not. Awe and humbleness this entails. The scale of our shared existence can be experienced.

These aspects of consciousness are not shared by machines. Nonetheless, day by day we cede more and more of our autonomy. It's not a new story, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and perhaps out of date. In the meantime, it has been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Perhaps we need an update.