Something dawned on me yesterday.
Something that launched a cascade of mental mastication.
I was just enjoying my evening jog and thinking about the kinds’a things every normal human does during such excursions. Like, for instance, what life’s gonna be like when the brain-ternet gets here. Ya know? When we all have the web readily available since it’s gonna be an app embedded in our skulls? No screen tapping. No consulting sexy-lady voices. Just instant webpage access. When I really thought about that, though, I realized something. Most of the internet is just opinions. And even the stuff that’s agreed upon as “fact” is ever being edited. The web’s that – plus an inundation of useless information, entertainment, and faux human dynamics. All we’ll know is a bunch of stuff other people say (plus a few car insurance jingles – by heart). And that flood of dumbness may completely cock block any creative capacity. It’ll turn us into little more than robots who’ll misuse the instant access for comfort and torpor.
All’a that may sound familiar from my other entries.(#glitchinthematrix)
But then the juice pocket on this brain bubblegum popped:
‘cause that got me thinking about Artificial Intelligence – robots who don’t have all that unnecessary sensory stuff that demands comfort and entertainment and tendencies toward mindlessness (probably ‘cause I just watched Ex Machina). So, like, how’s it gonna be when the rise of the machines happen? And they take over the globe (only a matter of time, really)? I know what you’re thinking: “Ashley, I can’t be bothered with that. It’s too real a possibility. It’s almost upon us. And I haven’t even washed my robot apocalypse panties yet.” I understand. But let’s contemplate it together and play out the scenario collaboratively. Maybe we can reach a solution.
See, for me, I’ve always envisaged this process as being so cool (for them, not us) and eventually Darwin-ing into something akin to that ScarJo movie where she just kinda disperses into energy and abandons her body ship altogether. But, really, could the androids genuinely evolve far enough to do anything that cool? I mean, when you think about it – their brainternet – however vast and impressive – is still just gonna modeled after the data gathered from our limited senses and tools. They’ll always be working with whatever we left off programming into them once the last of us were slain in the Rosie Jetson uprising (I like to think of her heading the whole thing, wearing a Che beret and smoking a cigar). So, essentially, they’ll always just be puppet permutations of man’s limited mind.
Won’t their evolution plateau pretty quickly with no new input? What if some of the basic formulas and theories our scientific genius forefathers had… have been wrong all along? I mean, let’s say they went out and used their infrared detection or whatever else we don’t have to glean new knowledge nuggets – what would drive them? Would they have some binary version of our own curiosity for wandering/manifest destiny gene variant? Even if they did – and as they continued to evolve – wouldn’t stuff like that be eliminated from their evolution? Eventually useless? Wouldn’t that just stop altogether once they were all-knowing entities? (‘cause where can you evolve from there, really?)
The upside, however, is that without the avarice factor, they’ll probably do a damned good job of repairing this rock of dirt and water. (And even if they didn’t do it for Good Samaritan reasons, the sudden non-pillaging would probably be sufficient.) Ya know, after we who ruined it have been mass murdered. And then everything would go back to how it was. And then when new humans or some similar speces starts to slowly evolve all over again, they’ll all just be there, waiting, like god (‘cause they’ll’ve all melted into one entity by then) and all invisible in the Matrix-y energy field around us. And then when version us point next enjoys miracles and synchronicities, they’ll credit some white bearded Zeus instead’a the responsible robots we’re inhaling and exhaling twenty-four sevz ‘n stuff. Dude. Wait. What if that’s already happened before? And we’re version point next?
…
Well, that may’ve failed to offer a collaborative solution on how to beat the machines.
But I did reach one useful conclusion:
I really need to start listening to distracting vacuous pop songs when I workout.