Small People, Big Machines

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Small People, Big Machines

We are a species of small people who build big machines to 1) perpetuate ourselves, and to 2) improve upon ourselves with increased power and function. We build telescopes, spacecraft, computers, nuclear reactors, drone missiles, whole societies, powerful weapons, monetary systems, institutions, codes of law, courts, religious structures, constitutions, artificial hearts...amazing and magnificent things upon cursory inspection. But there are some issues that should be considered.

We tend to get into problems when we make any of the following strategic errors:

• We become too dependent on these machines;
• We lose the ability to monitor, unplug and adjust these machines;
• We forget about our original purpose in creating these machines;
• We surrender our power to these machines and let them run our individual lives for us, and to make all of our decisions for us;
• We assume that they are always more accurate or better than the persons who created them or the persons who are using them;
• We sell them to others who turn them against us (no...I haven't said anything about the blowback in Afghanistan -- that would be far to easy);
• We lose the instruction manuals;
• We entrust their custodianship to unworthy individuals;
• We blame them for our own, Human failings;
• We let our bodies and minds atrophy because of our reliance upon these machines;
• We neglect to test them adequately (no, I won't reference Internet Explorer 8) prior to release or deployment;
• We begin to worship them as if they we God-made, and not Human-made.

There is no mistaking the lure and addictive power of machines. They are like narcotics in this way. And when we become addicted, we become enslaved.

Machines should serve us, lest we wish to serve them.

I am not a great fan of such hit movies as The Terminator, The Net, The Matrix, Arthur Clarke's/ Stanley Kubrick's '2001'. It saddens me to read Revelations.

But regardless of my criticisms of the lack of artfulness in some of these works, I believe them to be potentious. Today's science fiction (I am told) becomes tomorrow's science fact.

You've been warned.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle


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