I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive
Dick Tracy and his 2-way wrist radio (C) Tribune Content Agency (Fair Use)
Sometimes, I feel as if I’ve lived in three worlds.
I was born into an AM radio, emerging black-and-white TV world with three networks, and families that shared a single telephone line. The second world was emerging technology, digital communications, cellphones, and watches that worked just like Dick Tracy’s wrist-radio from the fifties.
World number three is upon us now, and if Elon Musk is right, we’ll soon see the end of currency. And jobs. And we’ll have nothing much to do.
This is the AI world, where artificial intelligence will do our thinking and cure diseases and such, and robots can handle the physical labor. To Musk, it sounds like a great age is coming on. I’m skeptical. Not that it will happen, but that life will change so much. Let’s hope that if this future comes about, human beings will find something to do that will challenge us.
AUDIO: Random Samplings a Logical Mind (to come)
Are we about to experience Star Trek? Or Hank Williams?
Video: Hank Williams with “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.”
Williams, who died at the age of 29, wrote a song with Fred Rose entitled “I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive,” that was about a man who was down on his luck. One verse went like this:
Everything’s again’ me and it’s got me down
If I jumped in the river, I would probably drown
No matter how I struggle and strive
I’ll never get out of this world alive
Due to alcohol and drugs, he exited this world far too early. However, the kind of struggles his song was dealing with are far removed from the world we live in now.
Video: Tesla’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang talk AI at U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum — 11/19/25
Think of this: The super-rich, such as Musk and Jeff Bezos, sometimes envision the conquering of death itself. They’d do that by creating some type of artificial body, mechanical or chemical, and transfer their brains or engrams, or consciousness into that body. Then, they’d be good for maybe a couple hundred years.
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That’s how to get out of this world alive, and into the next one, where science may be able to do who-knows what. Yes, billionaires don’t mind playing the role of God. If you think this can’t happen, how much of what we take for granted today did you think could not happen?
The world Musk envisions, with no money and nothing much to do but explore, is part of science fiction.
In the fifties movie “Forbidden Planet,” there’s a starship, a crew, a robot, a dangerous planet, and an extinct race of super-beings, the Krell, that left behind some advanced science that almost wipes out the protagonists. Does that sound like Star Trek? Well, yes, this movie was almost a pilot, and if you’ve never seen it, shame on you.
Video: “Forbidden Planet” trailer
I’ll note that no money exchanges hands as the plot unfolds, and it appears that super-science has opened up the way for space exploration.
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That’s what Star Trek was all about. Replicators made the food. Communicators worked like flip phones, and Tricorders worked kind of like AI. In Star Trek the Next Generation, the Holodeck could simulate any adventure you could think of. And when you’re done with the fun, you simply turn it off.
Video: Captain Picard enjoyed simulated adventures as PI Dixon Hill on the Holodeck.
One holodeck exchange in STNG that stuck with me concerned one of the characters created by the computer. After learning that he was nothing more than a hologram, he asked if he would go home that night to this wife and children – after the simulation was turned off. It was touching, and make you wonder if AI will have such emotions in real like.
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We’re awfully close to that future right now.
A world where work is outdated, and therefore currency is outdated. If the nations of the world could get together and stop fighting, the space-exploration world of Star Trek would soon be possible. Well, we’d still need faster-than-light speed, but let’s not get picky. Mankind will need a purpose when AI and robots can do everything that needs to be done.
Stuff that was fiction before is fact now.
Henry Kuttner’s “short wave oven” is now in every household. Star Trek’s replicator sure seems a lot like a 3D printer. Arthur Clarke’s communication satellites have been real for decades. Isaac Asimov’s robot series is closer than ever to becoming reality.
And even these science fiction geniuses didn’t foresee all the digital stuff we have now.
Ask yourself a few questions.
When the best songs, singers, actors, movies, TV shows, comic books, and plays are all written and produced by AI, what will you do? When the government provides all, what will be your goals? If exploring is all that’s left, will that be enough?
Just remember that the world we live in would shock our great grandfathers. Imagine what a cowboy in the old West, taking days to ride on horseback from New Orleans to Dallas, would think of a modern jetliner. Now think about what your children’s children will see.
I’ll never get out of this world alive, but a new world always seems to be around the corner. Elon Musk, he can get a suitable robot body, may get out of this world alive. In the digital environment, the impossible often becomes possible.
Video: “The Trade-Ins” episode of The Twilight Zone – an elderly couple looks at new bodies for sale
So, what’s left other than Elon’s new body?
We still need a unified field theory that works. We need to cure cancer and all other diseases. We need to figure out if wormholes are the answer to interstellar travel. Somehow, we’ve got to break the time barrier to bring Lincoln and Reagan and Rush Limbaugh into the present again. We have to build Jurassic Park, although we will need to keep the T-Rex in a stronger cage.
And human bodies. We’ve got to build artificial ones to house our brains so that we can get out of this world alive. Remember when currency starts to fade away, we’re entering into a new and exciting existence. As you may have heard, we’re not making pennies anymore.
Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster, and songwriter. Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us. Check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley.
Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Email Lynn at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.
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