May the Lord Bless his immortal soul.
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Virtual Gods
“…and the people bowed and prayed to the neon God they made…” Simon and Garfunkel from the Sounds of Silence
“…and the lamb lies down on Broadway…” Genesis from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Even today we can find people who believe so completely in their faith that they endure rigors and hardships all in the name of God. There are people who whip their own backs bloody or who strap bombs onto their bodies in the name of the Almighty.
In the west, it used to be that some came to know hardship in the name of God. Most religious folks these days bend God to their will. They do something first and get God to justify it later.
But there where still those who suffered in the name of the divine. Their divinities where often music stars and sometimes political leaders. Some would undergo privation in an effort to please their idols. But they soon found out that the idol didn’t feel their pain or worse the idol got old, got sick and died.
Now we come to the modern age wherein some suffer for their technology. There were reports of people standing in line for days in order to get the latest technology. Certainly some of these individuals didn’t have jobs but others did and waited in line anyway. There was a futurist who said something like first we will wear our technology. Then we will merge with our technology and finally we will become our technology.
At last humanity will succeed in that age-old quest to become one with a virtual God.
There will be a snake in this paradise however. As fleshly, mortal creatures our needs and drives are obvious and clear. Being hot, cold, horny, hungry, or having to go to the bathroom pretty much tells you what do. How will an immortal machine find purpose? It is clear that as become our machines and become one with our virtual God, some of the old drives will fade away. A machine will have no inherent desire to reproduce. Once fusion energy is mastered the machines will no longer feel the hunger for energy–it will be plentiful. The one passion that does translate pretty easily into silicon is the desire to know. The super computer that we will become will still seek and store knowledge–though it may not know why.
So if you were networked biological computer one of the things you might find yourself doing is trying to get rid of the wet ware. To go from a “software” computer based on networked human brains to a “hardware” a computer with no biological parts. In the beginning you will need the wet ware. There will be no cheaper or faster way to get all those neurological connections. But as the computer improves itself it may find a way to wire itself at a molecular level. This could obviate the need for living software and so the computer would deep six its biological parts. And so the computers would at first keep humanity around not for the silly reason they gave on the movie Matrix. We are a very messy and inefficient way to make energy. Rather we would be kept around like the Borg because our brains were essential to the collective. But the computer would inevitably evolve beyond the need for flesh once it could write its name on those strings that are supposedly the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
So the machine loses its ghost and becomes a gatherer and storer of information. It might grow and send out probes but only in so far as was need to find out what’s out there. It would not colonize.
In the long distant future when all is known and the computer has finished organizing all of the knowledge in the universe, it might come to fulfill its next to the last purpose when some sentient being pushes the Search button to find information.
The machine’s last gasp might come when some poor fool pushes the button that says Download. And the computer would seek to inject all of itself into living tissue. It might be like some religions wherein the only purpose of mankind is to make prayers to God. And God only wants a specific number of prayers. Say 100 trillion or so. And when that 100 trillionth prayer is send skyward toward heaven, the purpose of the universe is fulfilled and all that we know starts to unravel.
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Golf Balls Killed the Loch Ness Monster
It is better to be drunk than wasted
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