Saturday, October 17, 2009

A post about Future Technology and the consequences to mankind.

I am not a seer but there are many different possibilities of the future as written into today's science fiction and even movies made from these stories like Surrogates, I Robot, A.I., The Matrix to doomsday movies like the Terminator series to animated movies and series like Ghost in the Shell. The theme in most of these shows are basically the advancement of technology and its impact towards mankind in the future.

Of course everything in the movies are only fiction and are just a fragment of the writer's imagination but there is no smoke without a fire. The rapid advancement of technology in recent years makes what the writer dream of into reality in the near future. From robots revolting against humans to just non~thinking robots like those in Surrogates, we can see that robots are undeniably a part of our future whether we like them or not.

Robots represents the peak of technological advancement in production of cheap and efficient labor while able to follow each and every of our whims. This means robots will be second class slaves to us. From this view of non~resisting robots as our slaves there can be two trains of thoughts. The first is the acceptance of our new role as masters of the robot race and the other is the increase of hatred towards these companions of man.

From the first point of view where man should take his rightful place as the master. It is we who create the robots. Is it not right for us to be the master and not treat them as equals? Even if they can think for themselves, a robot's AI are just programs written by man. With this surely we deserve the servitude of the robots. This view is one of the most common among the movies where mankind will be the one suffering in the end. Robots that are created with no processing power for themselves will only be seen by humans as just tools, disposable tool used for our own sake and pleasure and benefits.

If we take the second view of robots being our equal instead of master~slave relationship, we can coexist together, living of each other. A world where there is no discrimination, where there is no clear difference between them and us. A world like the one in Ghost in the Shell. Some call this Utopia and why not? If we humans are able to learn to try and live together instead of living in conflict and in danger, surely the society will come to a time of peace and prosperity.

Both views are possible where the outcomes are different where one we can live happily together and the other we had to wage war for the survival of our species. To me the consequences comes from the choice that we have to make as a one united human race when the need arises.

If we do manage to stop killing ourselves and earth I sincerely pray that we can reach to that state of technological advancement.

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