Down at my local jellywrestling haunt last night, fellow connisseur Harmonica Lewinsky popped an indecent proposal. She put it to me (with a disclaimer that she wasn’t a conspiracist) that machines will one day rule the earth, and are already beginning to slowly make their moves. You be the judge.
This Is What The Barman Heard
‘I saw this tv show the other night that said Japan is shit-scared about young women not having enough sex..’
‘Whaaaaat? Oh – was it some sort of manga-anime thing?’
‘No – it was a doco’ and get this – within a decade, one whole third of their population will be retired, which they won’t be able to afford and women are marrying older and older or not getting married at all and partying instead of having kids, so they’re madly trying to encourage young women to have babies…’
‘Far out – and I suppose you reckon the machines are breeding faster then?’
‘Well obviously in Japan, but most Western countries are worried about aging populations these days…’
‘Yeah yeah – the machines are winning the population race – but hey it’s your shout – howz about another franjelica and lime?’
Transcript from Taxi-Microphone
‘Humans don’t have any secrets anymore – I mean we’re being monitored all the time by machines…we have no privacy from machines.’
‘Yeah – but there’s always some human who watches the security cameras..’
‘Not anymore – we don’t have enough spare eyeball hours to watch each other all the time, and so computer software automates surveillance, supposedly able to spot a person in a crowd, or able to find keywords like ‘blow up the trade towers’ or ‘marihuana’ out of the zillions of messages zooming around between satellites.. so humans get to see some bits – but the machines have all of our communication…and their database of us just keeps getting bigger.’
‘Okay so we’ve got more information stored on machines than our memories – but it’s not like machines are able to do anything with it..’
‘Ha~! I thought you were smarter than that – but here’s your house..’
Transcript from 24hr Supermarket Security Camera
‘Fuck – that’s pretty expensive for 6 litres of chocolate ice-cream, isn’t it?’
‘Well it is 3.30am… and what do the buddhists say – don’t scratch your ice-cream itch of desire?’
‘Ha~! Something like that – but exactly when will a machine be able to have desires? And don’t go tellin’ me about your little handheld virtual pets or computerised chess players or soccer robots..’
‘Is it just the ice-cream sir?’
‘oh yeah, sorry.. Hey – what do you reckon? Do you find it ridiculous that people believe machines will become intelligent?’
‘Do you mean like the terminator?’
Silent-Dome Words
These are just from memory, ain’t nobody who can get transcripts from dis-place. Except maybe Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris when they was still fresh from ‘nam. Apologies in advance too for the lacklustre conclusion, but it’s a battle that you have to figure out for yourself really. After a few weeks grazing the Osbourne show and the vaccuous celebrity show, I’ve softened my views a little too – maybe humans aren’t that evolved after all.
‘So basically – machines are breeding faster, machines are smarter, and machines are stronger – our thumbs are no match for the onslaught of mobile phones and handheld games… so how can they lose? Nice pyjamas by the way~!’
‘In a word – ‘Flexibility’ – it’s’ll be a while before you see a robot smiling it’s way down a curvy hill… and no robot’s ever gonna write ‘zen and the art of skateboarding’.. not that it’s a battle anyway..’
‘Ha~! Humans are already robots, we’re already machines – shaped by the technology we use, pre-programmed to keep the machines rollingout…’
As Harmonica reached for a bedside drink, her slender spine posed before me. I reached for her off switch, I needed to sleep.