Future Iron Men, Women, and Pets
Jeshua is a diverse ethnicity American living in the year 3026, a thousand years after our present day. By his time, Earth has changed dramatically. The planet is considerably warmer than it was in 2026. Icebergs still exist in the far north, but only a fraction of the polar ice remains. Many islands and coastal regions have disappeared beneath rising seas, forcing millions of people to become refugees and relocate to places with more available land.
Some communities survive on government provided ships, while others live in enormous stilt houses and traditional style pile dwellings adapted for a flooded world. With land becoming increasingly scarce, there are very few people who still live in traditional houses. Most of the world's population lives in massive apartment towers, where thousands of people can live within a relatively small area. Migration has become one of the defining issues of the century, with many people moving to regions that still have available land and fewer population restrictions.
Jeshua lives in Tokyo, while Okinawa has long since been partially submerged beneath the rising ocean.
But Jeshua isn't a scientist, politician, or military officer. He's an air conditioning salesman.
His job, however, is far more important in 3026 than it might sound. With temperatures continuing to rise, climate control systems are essential to survival. Jeshua sells advanced cooling systems to ordinary families, apartment owners, businesses, and large corporations. He doesn't simply knock on doors and make sales. He demonstrates the equipment, provides samples, negotiates excellent prices, and helps people determine which system is best suited to their living conditions.
Jeshua also has something that makes his work and his life very different from that of people in 2026.
He wears a collection of external AI devices attached to his body. One resembles an advanced version of Google Glasses, but it is far more sophisticated. The device can provide information almost instantly, functioning almost like an extension of his mind.
He doesn't need to memorize hundreds of books or fill his brain with endless facts. If he encounters a question requiring specialized knowledge, the AI can provide the information within a fraction of a second. It can even give him the equivalent of professional training instantly when a situation requires specialized skills.
For example, while walking through Tokyo, Jeshua encounters a stray cat that has been struck by a hovering scooter. The animal is frightened and dragging its tail.
The moment Jeshua focuses his attention on the cat, his external AI analyzes the animal's condition. Within an instant, the device provides him with the knowledge and precision of a professional animal chiropractor, identifying the location and nature of the injury and immediately telling him where it is safe to touch and where he must avoid applying pressure.
Jeshua doesn't need years of memorized medical training. His external system instantly supplies the specialized knowledge as though a professional chiropractor were guiding his hands in real time. He understands the injury almost immediately and knows exactly how to handle the frightened animal without causing further harm.
The AI determines that the cat's tail has been dislocated rather than fractured. Jeshua carefully follows the guidance, treats the injury, and helps the cat recover.
For Jeshua, this is completely natural. The technology doesn't make him think harder. It removes the burden of searching through information. Knowledge becomes available to him instantly whenever he needs it.
His external AI can also function as a universal translator. A small device attached near his jaw allows him to communicate across languages. Jeshua speaks English naturally, and the device produces Japanese. When he reads Japanese text, the system translates it into English lettering for him. The technology allows him to communicate internationally without having to consciously learn every language.
In practical terms, Jeshua can communicate in almost any language through his external AI system.
Yet he doesn't consider himself a genius.
In fact, without his technology, Jeshua would probably struggle with complicated equations and enormous amounts of technical information. He isn't embarrassed by that. To him, knowing that two plus two equals four is more important than memorizing an entire mathematical textbook if he has no practical reason to use it.
The people of 3026 have learned that knowledge and wisdom are not necessarily the same thing.
Jeshua's society has access to more information than any civilization before it. But Jeshua's personal philosophy is that information should serve humanity, not replace human judgment.
His AI can tell him where a broken bone is.
It can give him the knowledge of a professional animal chiropractor.
It can calculate the most efficient price for an air conditioning system.
It can translate a thousand languages.
But it cannot replace Jeshua's judgment.
His AI can tell him what something is. Jeshua decides what should be done about it.
His AI can identify an injured animal. Jeshua decides to help it.
His AI can calculate the most efficient price for an air conditioning system. Jeshua can recognize when a struggling family deserves a better deal.
His AI can translate a thousand languages. Jeshua still has to understand the person behind the words.
Those decisions belong to Jeshua.
And that is precisely why, in the year 3026, common sense has become one of the most valuable forms of intelligence.
And his AI is simply another tool, just like a hammer and an anvil, created through human intelligence. It is a machine that has been fed by generations of human knowledge, creativity, experience, and the will of the human spirit. Within that knowledge is also the soul of the arts and melodies created by generations of people, reaching back to figures such as Ludwig van Beethoven and countless other artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers. Before you blame AI, remember that the hammer or anvil is not to blame. The scary ones are the people who use them.
Jeshua would rather fill his physical mind with moral sense, focus on his health, and naturally guard his spirit through meditation rather than spending his time on social media. He does read physical novels that were published in the 1940s for entertainment, adding to his natural knowledge and helping him develop the qualities of a gentleman.
An old commercial advertisement for an AI pet collar of 2226. There are many varieties of them available on Amazon.
As for pets, Jeshua has a few cats in his apartment. Sometimes, he has to travel abroad for business, and his pets also have external AI devices that help them feed themselves and possibly even clean their kitty litter while he is away for approximately a week. Vacations at this time are usually spent in domestic malls rather than traveling abroad, as much of the world is in a constant struggle to survive, and kidnapping has become a major criminal business. The devices are even capable of accessing Tokyo's commercial systems when necessary.
There are several well known thinkers whose statements support the idea behind Jeshua's philosophy.
Here are some useful, documented ideas:
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” This is probably the closest famous quote to Jeshua's idea. It suggests that practical judgment can be a form of genius rather than something inferior to intellectual ability.
Albert Einstein: “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” This is more complicated because Einstein was not necessarily praising common sense. It actually warns that what people call common sense can consist of assumptions acquired early in life.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.” This supports Jeshua's practical approach: use knowledge, observe the result, and adjust rather than becoming trapped in theory.
Ethan D. Bolker and Maura B. Mast, mathematicians who wrote Common Sense Mathematics, make an especially relevant point. Their textbook emphasizes using mathematics as a tool and common sense as a guide when dealing with real world problems. The authors specifically say that what they want students to retain is how to approach problems using common sense and common knowledge, rather than simply remembering particular mathematics from the curriculum.
Modern AI researchers make a similar distinction. Ronald J. Brachman and Hector J. Levesque argue that common sense requires more than isolated facts or formal reasoning. They describe it as something connected to a person's history, goals, desires, and drives.
Jeshua does not consider mathematical intelligence the highest form of intelligence. To him, mathematics is a tool, while common sense is the guide for knowing how and when to use that tool.
For your Jeshua/3026 concept, I would make external AI the preferred technology for healthy people seeking cognitive augmentation, while keeping brain implants primarily associated with medical applications. That is a defensible science fiction extrapolation, although there is no scientific consensus today that external AI is inherently superior to implants for intelligence.
Why external AI fits better.
Today's research shows an important distinction:
Brain implants can potentially provide higher bandwidth and more direct access to neural signals, but they are invasive and currently face biological, regulatory, maintenance, and long term safety challenges. These challenges can include the potential for brain damage. A 2026 review comparing Meta's noninvasive wristband, Synchron's minimally invasive system, and Neuralink's invasive cortical implant specifically describes these technologies as having different tradeoffs along an invasiveness spectrum.
External systems are much easier to upgrade, replace, and distribute. Microsoft Research, for example, explicitly describes its BCI work as pursuing “non-intrusive methods” and says its goal is to enable BCI technology for the general population.
Microsoft's research also includes head worn devices for things such as silent speech recognition and cognitive workload estimation.
And current AI glasses research is already moving toward something resembling to Jeshua's AI glasses: wearable devices can perceive the user's environment and provide real time AI assistance without putting anything inside the brain.
A particularly interesting researcher is Rajesh P. N. Rao, a computer scientist and professor at the University of Washington. He has proposed the concept of “brain co-processors,” in which artificial neural networks and the biological brain work together to augment human capabilities. Importantly, his work discusses both restoration and augmentation, rather than treating the technology exclusively as a medical replacement.
However, Rao's concept isn't an argument that external devices are superior to implants. His work is actually about combining artificial and biological intelligence, including neural interfaces.
By 3026, many scientists had concluded that the safest path toward human cognitive enhancement was not necessarily to place computers inside healthy brains, but to develop increasingly sophisticated external AI systems that could work alongside the human mind. Unlike an implanted machine, an external system could be upgraded, replaced, or removed without altering the brain itself.
When external AI devices become fully extended limbs of people with superior common sense, society could become far more advanced, with a much better quality of life, even amid worsening climate change. Half of the world might use the same technology for the benefit of humanity, while the other half could use it with evil intentions, attempting to hold the world at ransom.
This, however, brings me back to the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially the Book of Revelation, with its apocalyptic vision of a world descending into chaos under oppressive and evil powers, traditionally associated by many Christians with the Antichrist. It may sound cliché, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Technology can give humanity extraordinary knowledge and power, but it cannot determine whether people will use that power for good or evil. That choice still belongs to the human heart.
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