I'll probably be the first against the wall.
So, I read Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" last night and one of the things that struck me is that, in fiction, when computers gain sentience, they almost always use it to nefarious ends. Like the Machines in The Matrix or ...what was the computer's name in 2001 A Space Odyssey? They always seem to hate humanity. Then I got to thinking, how is that any different from folk tales of trees that harbor a deep and abiding hatred for humans because we can move around and they cannot? Is this just the latest incarnation of that trope? Or have stories like this become popular because somewhere within us we fear that we really are building our machines a bit too smart? I don't know about y'all but I think I'm going to be a little nicer to my laptop after reading this.
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I too find it interesting that we seem to be scared of technology yet at the same time, we embrace it. As we discussed in class, our technology is now a part of us (you will not separate me from my iPhone!). I think it somewhat stems from the fact that we are so dependent on technology that we are scared that one day machines will outnumber us and we will be overrun.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Hal (9000) is the name you are looking for.
What a fine paper idea: The folkloric human-hating trees compared to the science-fictional human-hating AIs. The chief difference seems to be that trees and humans evolved independently of one another, while the AIs were (at least in part) created by humans -- although many trees did evolve through human cultivation, come to think of it. Hmm.
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