The View from Mars

The surface of Mars: are we prepared for the future? Perhaps not...

What does the Earth look like from Mars? Probably nothing more than a point of light, but a point of light where humans have run out of ideas. Instead, we fight each other over nothing and invest our future unimaginatively into AI and technology. The situation sounds desperate on Earth. The Martians are becoming impatient with our myopic time-wasting.

Earth has reached a singular conclusion: that for every problem we encounter the solution is technological. This is all very well, a successful strategy that enabled us to brightly enter the 21st Century. With the advent of AI in around 2020, the formula, wedded to liberal-democracy and capitalism, started to fall apart, because we allowed AI to do the thinking for us. What AI lacked was originality.

So, has Earth lost its way? Mars, our sibling planet, steps in at the very possibility of Earthly prevarication. Too much reliance on technology and we are suddenly confronted with a singular anomaly: Martian vantage point. The view from Mars could be a dangerous one, yet one that heralds a great future.

What’s the time on Mars? GMT won't do, so still no answer. It may well become year: zero, the way things are going on Earth. Wake up, people; time to smell the Martian coffee. Grown on the plains of Elysium Mons...