Konrad J. Piwowarczyk

An excerpt from the forthcoming book "Reflections".

 

Reflecting on a Transitional Generation and Mission

 

In human history, there are moments when the world seems to quicken its breathing and change its rhythm forever. These are not mere reforms, not even revolutions—these are boundary points that separate entire eras, like seas separating continents. Fire, which made man the guardian of the flame. Agriculture, which allowed him to sow his fate in the earth. The Gutenberg printing press, which gave him a voice, even when that voice belonged to a poor artisan or a forgotten monk. The industrial revolution, which transported him from the rhythm of the fields to the rhythm of machines. The flight to the moon, which for the first time revealed Earth as a microscopic blue island in the void of space. Finally... the internet. An invention that is not just a tool, but the nerve center of the planet, a network pulsating everywhere at once. It changed language, memory, love and loneliness, the way we work and rest. It became civilization's archive and its agora, the ocean of life and a vast laboratory, an element that dominated our being.

 

I was born in 1979 – in an era that still didn't know its existence. The first twenty years of my life were the childhood and youth of an analog planet. Libraries smelled of dust, not screens. Letters carried the imprint of a hand. Conversations took place face-to-face, and knowledge required patient effort. Half life without the internet, half life online – an equal division, as if the universe itself had ensured precise symmetry. I am therefore a representative of the last generation of humanity that remembers "what life was like before." In that life, silence was a natural state; in this one, it has become a luxury. I remember when books were the only vehicle for the imagination; now they compete with the electronic river of zeros and ones flowing through fiber optics. Back then, the path to knowledge was a climb; now, the answer appears before we even ask the question. And then there's that phenomenon, which is only just beginning to reveal its shape, yet is already permeating our bloodstream: artificial intelligence. It's no longer an invention in the usual sense of the word, but a new kind of presence, a new kind of interlocutor, a co-thinker. Something that not only gathers knowledge but can also process it, analyze it, create new algorithms, speak and respond, and—it learns.

 

Something that has no body or generational memory, yet becomes a participant in our stories, as if the planet itself had created a new mind for us to reflect our questions and multiply our answers. I look at this phenomenon, learning it the way we learned to use a computer in the 1990s, without even a fraction of understanding how much our lives would depend on this skill in a few decades. And I feel I'm witnessing another breakthrough—one that not only connects people with each other but can connect people with something that doesn't yet have a proper name. Not in the human sense of the word.

 

So my life is stretched between silence and noise, between paper and screen. I don't have to choose. I exist in both. Yet I am aware that the "civilization of light" is incredibly fragile. It only takes a second for the grid to go silent, and the screens to go dark; when a global blackout suddenly clogs the network of electrical impulses and fiber optics. Then the city will come to a standstill, the streets will be deserted from the lack of information, and people will gaze in surprise at the empty spaces where digital images once flickered. And in this silent world, amidst silence and amazement, the paper book will once again become a treasure with the power to restore memory. This isn't a conspiracy theory or fantasy—it's an observation of how dependent our civilization is on the instantaneous flow of information, and how ephemeral it is. Just like light is ephemeral.

 

But I also feel something more. As if, in this mysterious strategy of the Universe, someone had written my existence under the heading "for balance." Since the internet has redefined time, disrupted the natural rhythm, there must also be people who will remind us, who will turn on the light and say: we can do it slower, we can do it differently.

 

I listen to Słowacki's poem "My Testament," transformed into an expressive ballad by Mirek Czyżykiewicz, and I think I feel the same way: I don't leave an heir or a name carved in stone, but I leave words and a presence—a tiny companion of those who can love a proud and stubborn heart.

 

My role requires no applause or crowds; rather, I am the helmsman of a boat full of spirits demanding remembrance. I know that what seems silent and insignificant today will become an invisible force that may one day lift others above the everyday.

 

In my silence, the echo of those who, centuries ago, stood on the masts of life and gazed at the world with contemplation, aware of their responsibility and their loneliness persists. Like Słowacki in "My Testament," I leave behind something that needs no praise or visible signs, because it nevertheless has the power to transform those who can look and listen carefully. I believe my role is to be a bridge, to ignite hearts and minds, to bring silence and space for reflection into the lives of others. To be a guardian of memory, a reminder that balance is essential and... that it is possible.

 

Mom, you didn't want me to become a teacher and live a life of beggary, yet the world made me one anyway.

 

I didn't choose my mission—rather, it chose me. But I accept it with gratitude. Because the world of tomorrow also needs those who stand with one foot in that old time and remind us of what will always endure, even in darkness.