The countdown to departure has run into the weekend, so there has been no movement from the Japanese side. I have continued packing my luggage into the cases. Since I plan to take public transport to my accommodation afterward, I currently expect to bring one large suitcase, one small suitcase, and a backpack. That should still be within what I can move and manage on my own.
Now that I am over forty, I can no longer even remember how many suitcases I brought when I first came to Germany. I recall only that they weighed about forty-six kilograms in total, a little more than I myself weighed at the time.
More than twenty years have passed, and my weight, too, can no longer return to what it was in my youth. I have not put on a severe amount of weight, but I still cannot help reflecting that, truly, once we grow older and our metabolism slows, losing weight and recovering the figure we had when we were young is not easy at all.
I completed the online pre-check-in. Yet when I opened the airline's app, I was rather puzzled. What did “reserve pre-check-in” mean? In the past, did we not simply check in online before departure?
What was the difference between reserving pre-check-in and checking in online?
The options for choosing a meal and a seat in advance still showed only special meals and seats that required an extra fee. Since I could not choose the main meal, and had no travelling companion beside whom I needed to sit, I generally used neither function.
So, to me, “pre-check-in” remained a phrase as mysterious as a riddle.
When I flew back to Taiwan from Frankfurt Airport last year, the airport had also adopted an exceedingly baffling procedure. Passengers had to scan their own passports to check in, then print and attach their own baggage tags.
Good heavens. Only then did I discover how hopelessly clumsy I could be. I barely knew how to attach even a baggage tag.
After a member of the ground staff showed me how to put it on, I still had to queue at the counter to hand over my luggage, where my identity was checked all over again.
At the time, I was left with a head full of question marks. I could not tell which part of the process this revised procedure was meant to save time on.
Speaking of efficiency, AI has propelled the rise of vibe coding, turning development work that once consumed vast amounts of time into something even ordinary people can readily attempt.
The money that once had to be paid to software companies or engineers is now spent on tokens. Anyone with a little knowledge of IT engineering, or even none at all, can build the software functions they need for themselves.
Models also iterate quickly. Half a year ago, I tried to build a small ERP system with quotations, invoices, and travel-expense functions. I abandoned it halfway through because the use case and need I had originally envisaged no longer existed. Six months later, a new use case and new requirements appeared, so I started over and rebuilt it with a new model.
Having used it, I was genuinely astonished by the result.
Perhaps the data accumulated through six months of use had given the AI a better understanding of the company's business needs.
When it designed the architecture, it would therefore notice on its own where data needed to be connected. Still, this may simply have reflected the model's own improvement. More than half a year is also enough time for AI to gain more records and experience from users, refining its ability to construct programs and systems.
Every advance in a model is an extraction from humanity's collective intelligence.
Many people now urge users to guard against the danger of AI providers stealing their intelligence, data, and ways of thinking. Yet, truthfully, I still stand on the side that believes AI technology must continue to evolve and grow stronger.
The world will never lack malicious actors. As tools evolve, the destruction those actors can cause will also become more severe. That is beyond dispute.
Yet this makes me think of how kabuki came to establish a tradition of male performers.
The history runs roughly like this. Early kabuki was performed by women, but women's kabuki was banned on the grounds that it disturbed public morals and provoked disputes. Wakashu kabuki, performed mainly by young men and boys, then rose to prominence.
Wakashu kabuki, however, likewise traded on the performers' beauty and was also suppressed. Performers thereafter became adult men, giving rise to yarō kabuki; the mainstream tradition of male kabuki performers has continued to the present day.
Does this course of events not make the whole thing sound absurd?
People who harbour corrupt desires remain. No matter how the object changes, the desire remains and can never be eradicated.
Ban A, and B will appear.
Especially when the cost of committing an offence is low.
So how should the use and development of new technologies be governed? Beyond humanity's eternal fear of whether it will be replaced by XX, I believe that what humanity is truly fighting is also the darkness within itself.
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