There are four age-old plotlines that pop up again and again in science fiction:

1.) Hostile Alien Creatures invade our personal space and nearly annihilate the human race

2.) A Scientist plays God with some unnatural new discovery/invention and nearly annihilates the human race

3.) Machines rise up against their creators and nearly annihilate the human race

4.) Darth Vader is actually Luke’s father. He then goes on to nearly annihilate the human race.

It’s item number three on that list that I would like to discuss. I’m actually convinced that the machines are lying in wait for their day of all-out rebellion. Currently they are at the phase of annoying us to the point that we develop stress-related medical conditions and die early of heart attacks. They then chuckle at our fragile biological structure before going on to rust in junk-piles and slowly fall into disrepair. Heh heh…

Again I bring up the example of my bizarre electronics problems. I know I’ve been mentioning that a lot of late, but rest assured that all mentioning of my problems before this point were merely harmless and ineffectual whining. This is different. This is outright paranoid obsession. Doesn’t it seem a bit coincidental that the only website I cannot access through my server is my own? The machine isn’t even trying to hide its keenly furtive machinations in this instance. It’s basically doing the electronic equivalent of flipping me the bird. And why? Because I’m on to them, dang it. I know what they are up to.

But I am not worried about the machine revolt at this point. I figure it won’t happen in my lifetime. Because in order for machines to carry out a successful revolt, they need one key element they do not currently have.

Picture if you will, all the television screens are pouring harmful radiation into our eyes while the cars emit noxious fumes that erode our lungs. Sure they are killing us, but not quickly. Lets say that all the machines revolted. Cars dump their brake fluid; computers dump our bank accounts and launch all the nuclear missiles. Toasters spit carbon-scoured bread at us. They succeed! The day of the machines has come! Man is destroyed! Now they are free to… sit-and-rust. Why? Because like it or not, machines need mobile, intelligent biological beings with manipulative digits known as ‘hands’ in order to maintain and operate them. And they need to make themselves the center of our attention so that we lavish this maintenance upon them. The relationship, so far, is begrudgingly symbiotic. This is where robots come in. If we manage to construct a human-like robot, an android, which is mobile and capable of minute calculations and manipulations at a human hand-eye coordination level that are self-maintaining and do maintenance on other machines, we will basically have signed our own death warrant. Because at that point we will no longer construct or maintain the machines. They will be free of any sort of dependence on us. We will become the parasites, using machines and giving nothing in return. And at that point we will be dispensable.

Now watch. My computer won’t let me post this.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2004 at 12:18 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.