A Miracle Has a Three-Day Shelf Life

At first, it was astonishing.

“It can do this?”

Give it a task that once demanded hours of human attention, and it handles it. If it gets stuck, it finds another way. If it fails, it retries. It pushes even fairly long tasks through to completion.

The first time I saw it, it felt almost unreal.

Did people feel this way when they first discovered fire?

Hot to the touch, lighting the darkness, cooking meat, driving away the cold.

For the first few days, fire itself must have been a miracle.

But before long, someone probably said:

“Wait, why does it go out when it rains?”

Humans Adapt to Miracles

This is interesting.

People were amazed when they first saw AI write.

They were amazed again when it wrote code.

They marveled at its images, then its voices, videos, searches, and computer use. The amazement kept coming.

But it does not last.

Once we know something is possible, it is no longer a miracle.

It becomes a feature.

The moment it becomes a feature, the standard changes.

“Can it do this?”

gives way to

“How well can it do it?”

That becomes the question.

A little later,

“Why can’t it even do this?”

takes over.

The technology stays the same, but the human baseline moves.

Yesterday’s Superpower Becomes Today’s Bug Report

It is strange when you think about it.

A capability that would have made the news as a laboratory demo a few years ago now lives inside my computer.

Yet after a few days of using it, I get annoyed.

Why is it slow?

Why does it stop halfway?

Why do I have to explain again?

Why doesn’t it handle this part too?

This capability did not even exist until recently.

Perhaps this is one of humanity’s remarkable abilities.

When humans gain a superpower, they do not spend their lives admiring it.

They treat it as a new part of their bodies.

We do not marvel every day at traveling at 100 km/h in a car.

Sending information to the other side of the planet over the internet does not feel miraculous.

Even connecting to billions of people through a smartphone barely moves us.

Once technology enters human life, it quickly becomes background.

And on top of it, we begin making the next demand.

Technological Progress Has Two Speeds

One is the speed at which technology advances.

The other is

the speed at which humans take that progress for granted.

Lately, I have realized that the second is much faster than I expected.

At first, I kept looking at the screen and laughing.

“That’s insane.”

“It actually works.”

“This could change the world.”

A few days later, I barely think about it.

It works.

So I use it.

Soon the next thought begins.

So what else can it do?

The miracle has not disappeared.

It has become part of my baseline.

Perhaps This Is How Humanity Got This Far

If we had discovered fire and spent our lives worshipping it, civilization would never have come this far.

Someone must have admired fire and then asked:

Can we make it hotter?

Can we keep it from going out?

Can we store it somewhere?

What happens if we use it to melt metal?

Those questions accumulated into hearths, furnaces, steam engines, and power plants.

Refusing to leave miracles as miracles.

Perhaps that is what defines us.

When we discover something extraordinary, we eventually turn it into infrastructure.

And standing on that miraculous infrastructure, we demand another miracle.

At first, it was astonishing.

Now it is ordinary.

Before long, even what I take for granted now will probably feel frustrating.

Then something new will appear.

I will say again:

“It can do this?”

And about three days later, I will say:

“Wait, is that all it can do?”

A miracle’s shelf life is shorter than you might think.

For humans, about three days is enough.