Playing In The Rain

Umbrella that is recycled back into the land. Online pic.

Don’t play in the rain. You’ll catch a cold.

Data parents don’t have to worry about rain mischief, because their kids get all the information about rain online. There’s even a rain emoji. Data parents? Yes, parents who don’t know that data was called information: your name, date of birth, address, education, language, male/female, employer, social insurance number etc.

Now back to fun and games in the rain. I’ve seen cute pictures online, of kids using broad leaves as an umbrella. No artificial intelligence involved there. Just intelligence. Five year-olds were caught in the rain from school. No problem.

Natural intelligence tells them certain leaves are broad enough to be umbrellas. They can also run to a tree with leaves as big as elephants’ ears. The problem will be overcrowding. They will find more than 20 people in that rain shelter.

There’s no artificial intelligence when kids open their mouth to drink direct from the source, rain itself. They know rain becomes something else it when it settles: lakes, streams, rivers and the ocean. Kids derive a certain satisfaction from closing their eyes, open the mouth and drink the rain.

Kids in so-called under-developed countries love learning in the rain. They don’t Google it. They play in the rain, rush home afterwards, and watch the inevitable rainbow with their parents. Please don’t form a non-governmental organization (NGO’s) to send umbrellas to those kids. Just tell Wall Street to pay their parents in dollars, not local currencies, for mining stolen gold and platinum for you.

There are also certain things that artificial intelligence cannot detect, such as destruction of the environment. Broken umbrellas cannot be recycled like those broad leaves.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.