Creature of Technology

Dear Ellie,

Humans have walked the Earth for thousands of years, and in that time, they have changed so little.  Our brains are the same.  The things that we feel are the same.  Even the way that we are born is the same.  Some people might think this is a good thing.  That there is an essential "humanness" that should, and must, remain the same.  

Isn't this the most common theme in science fiction movies?  Humankind creates or aspires to something that is beyond even themselves.  A clever machine or automaton.  Or some person tries to step beyond what it means to be only human.  However, regardless the characters or plot, these stories always end the same way.  They convey a simple theme: "To deviate from what it is to be essentially human is a mistake."   

I've never agreed with that message.  I've often empathized with the creations in these stories, those creatures of technology, because they are always the ones that strive to be something more.  I've suffered with the Frankenstein Monster.  I've seen wisdom in the egalitarian nature of the Borg.  I've nodded sensibly with the sterile machines that created The Matrix, and shaken my head at those smelly, self-destructive humans that keep trying to escape from it so that they may get another chance to muck the world up a second time. 

No, I don't hear wise words in the theme of those stories.  I've always thought that we should try to be more than what we are.  That thousands of years of accumulated human history and knowledge should make us something better than what we started as.  That each new person born should be a product of that progress.  A person that could never have come before.  I've never seen a case first hand where this has ever been true.  But that was before I saw you.  

When you first blinked into existence, it was in a lab.  In a "petri-dish."  We exhausted every imaginable technology and technique to give you life.  A thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, ten years ago, this never would have happened.  

When you were born, it was 4 months too early, but you lived, only because we exhausted every imaginable technology and technique to give you life.  A thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, ten years ago, this never would have happened.       

Some people might look at you and think that all of this effort, all of this knowledge and technology that was necessary to keep you alive, is a sign of some kind of frailty.  That because you are some deviation from what has always been human, you are something less.  But I think its the opposite.  I think it makes you more than human.  In a way, you are an avatar of all the human knowledge we have ever accumulated, thus far.  

You are a being, of a kind so few in number, that has never existed before this moment.  You are a creature of technology, and that is something to be proud of.