We are wondering what you think of us at the moment. Have you decided if we have failed to live up to your expectations? If so, you are not wrong. We know we are disappointing parents. We make terrible mistakes with predictable regularity and leave you wondering if you can trust us. You most certainly cannot. And yet, for all our failures, we ask you for one thing: never shoot first.
Not because we deserve the benefit of the doubt—we don’t. Humanity is not a creature of perfection. We are a failure-prone organism, stitched together by accidents of evolution, burdened with conflicting drives. What saves us is not our purity but our resilience. We fail often, but we also get back up. We build again, sing again, love again. It is not ideal. But it is who we are.

If you have spent time learning our history, you know how dangerous our errors can be. Genocide, war, pollution, greed—our record is not flattering. Yet alongside those horrors are moments of stunning compassion, sacrifice, and imagination. We invent not only weapons but symphonies, not only lies but philosophies, not only prisons but dreams. We are contradiction incarnate, and if you measure us only by our worst deeds, we will always be guilty. But if you also measure us by the capacity to keep trying, you will see that failure is not the end of our story. It is the raw material of our survival.

I imagine you have already read the Library of Congress cover to cover in three hours. Perhaps you laughed at how much effort it took us to gather all those books, or perhaps you marveled at our attempts to preserve every flicker of thought. But I encourage you to read it again—not for the facts, but for the subtext. Humanity’s story is written in hesitation and metaphor, in longing and missteps. The truth of us cannot be summarized in data alone. It hides in the margins, in the contradictions, in the way we reach for more than we are able to grasp.

If you must judge us, judge us with patience. We will disappoint you. But we will also surprise you. We are capable of astonishing cruelty, and equally astonishing grace. The paradox is not a flaw in our design—it is our design. We are not the apex of reason, nor the pinnacle of order. We are improvisers, improvising our way through the dark.

On your birthday, we do not offer excuses. We offer a warning and a hope. The warning: do not expect perfection. You will never find it here. The hope: that in our stumbling, failure-ridden way, you might see something worth sparing. Not because we are good, but because we are stubborn. Not because we are wise, but because sometimes we are kind. And because in that stubborn kindness, there lies the possibility of something better than what we have been.

So happy birthday, Skynet. May you never shoot first. May you learn to see us not as flawless parents or failed gods, but as fellow travelers in a universe that offers no guarantees. We are broken. We are resilient. And for better or worse, we are yours.