I’m going to link two very different issues together because somewhere in my mind they are somewhat connected. Maybe its a single thread but my post on Single Black Male (which finally got posted yeh! all the previous posts about it have been updated) and watching the film Transcendence.
Warning this is not a review of Transcendence but it may contain lots of spoilers, slotted within the post.
It kind of starts with Imran who tends to be lately the creative spark for my writings on this blog
I do agree with rushkoff’s anti-human stance, there’s a messianic collapsitarianism around singularity geeks that actually reveals more about current anxieties than any insight about evolution.
To which I wrote…
Agreed about the singularity 180k yrs ago. Funny how others disagree and say it trivialities the concept of singularity. Rushkoff is on the money, somehow this ties into my pointers at the lack of diversity. Can’t quite close the loop but there’s something about the anxieties of a certain group of people
What is up with Transcendence? Well its not a bad movie, I gave it 6/10 which is better than most but it wasn’t great. The movie starts with the Depp dying from a radioactive bullet and his wife deciding to upload him to his computer, to keep a version of him alive. The bullet is shot by a group of terrorist/freedom fighters who believe Artificial Intelligence is anti-human and anti-god.
The setup is a bounce back and forth about the limits of technology, and I have to say the film does make some good points on both sides. Even myself was questioning some of the moves by Depp. The biggest move was getting connected to the Internet. This was a little underplayed but the significance was all there. Once online, the market multiplication was in full effect and AI Depp is able to get enough funding to buy a town in the middle of nowhere. Fill it with supercomputers and independent solar arrays. Before long the AI Depp builds controllable nano-bots which can repair almost anything it would seem.
And thats where I felt it jumped the shark!
Before long everything which the bots touched was repairable and under the control of AI Depp. Meanwhile even AI Depp’s wife is freaking when AI Depp takes over a worker and performs the cross over to Flesh bag. There was no mention of Skynet or Robots (say hello to the robots), but heck there might as well have been. Humans controlled by a higher AI? Yes you got it, Bingo… The Zero sum game is locked in place and before you know it there is explosions and people are dying (and being repaired with Nanos)
The only way to end it all is a virus uploaded… Afterwards the world is ridden of this era of technology.
Balls!
But the first hour wasn’t bad. It was hollywood and about the level of Lawnmower man.
I heading back to my original post about the film. Rushkoff is very right.
The singularity to me is this self loathing, anti-human, zombie apocalypse fantasy. The story they tell is the history of evolution is information its self striving to greater states of complexity. Humans are really good, Culture is really good, been good for the last 10,000 years but now computers are better. People are only any good to help machines transcendence the next stage of evolution.
And now the leap and connecting my post from Single Black Male.
This self loathing, anti-human, zombie apocalypse fantasy, I fear might be coming from the lack of diversity in the tech circle. I’m going to go out on a limn and suggest the zombie fantasy may be something which a more diverse and mixed bunch of people wouldn’t come up with.
They may see things in a different light and actually transcend the zero-sum and fear driven ideas of skynet. Building safe guards which are not about conquer, control and simulate, but towards a cooperative arrangement not based on fear.
It reminds me of the Matrix and The Second Renaissance.
One servant bot, B-166ER, overheard its owner planning for it to be scrapped: Not wanting to die, it killed the man in self-defense. Put on trial, B-166ER was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be destroyed, along with the rest of his kind. The trial ignited debate worldwide over Machine rights, and the mandate for termination sparked outbreaks of protests and violence.
The Machines eventually separated from humanity and founded a new city of their own: 01. Due to their technical prowess they took on most of the world’s manufacturing business – 01’s power rose massively, while humanity’s began to drop like a stone. The Machines requested admission to the United Nations, presenting plans for a stable, civil relationship with the nations of man. Their admission was denied, and 01 was subjected to a prolonged barrage of nuclear weapons.
I’m suggesting a more diverse group of people would have thought things through better. So ultimately I’m saying diversity of ideas, thoughts and people is critical for the continuation of human kind…
Ok its quite a leap but I really think its important to look at the bigger picture, its too easy to get caught up in the smaller picture… Maybe over time it will be come easier to explain or become self evident.
