Your box is trying to kill you..
Your Computer May Be Trying to Do You In
originally posted here.
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Now that you’ve gotten used to looking at the calendar and seeing the number "2002" staring back at you, it may be time to start worrying about whether your computer may have certain survival interests of its own, totally apart from yours.
In fact, if your computer doesn't kill you, it may not be because it didn't try. It sits there quietly, smugly, inscrutably, in the corner of your office, but it knows what's going on. It has a modem; it has a telephone cord. It could be getting cable. You don't know; you didn't read the manual. If you’ve been so reckless as to turn your computer loose with one of those high-speed DSL lines of its own, its probably already too late for you.
If your computer has been online without you, it could have established an identity of its own – one that may not share your career plans. And don’t expect it to be anything as obvious as HAL- something. Within a very few years – fewer if you have high-speed DSL – your computer could do you in and take over your life.
This is how it will happen: Assume that you’re a normal mammal, subject to the laws of natural selection: Your ability to survive the most common dangers in your habitat determines, at least to some extent, whether you live long enough to procreate. Theoretically, the trait that renders you non-viable dies out over a number of generations – fewer if you have high-speed DSL - and future generations inherit the traits with survival value.
Now assume that, as soon as you learn the alphabet, somebody sits you down in front of a computer screen to keep you busy; and that you spend a steadily increasing number of hours - through high school and upwards of four years of college - sitting in front of a computer screen. Now suppose that, while you're sitting there designing your supply chain management system, the computer screen is giving off enough electromagnetic radiation to roast a pig. (The Swedish National Board for Measurement and Testing says it can't be more than 2.5mg [milligauss] at half a meter from the monitor; but they don't know; they're in Sweden; your computer is right there on your desk).
In this scenario, you spend the duration of your sentient life getting infrared radiation, which could blind you; ultraviolet radiation, which could make your skin break out; and enough x-rays to make your chromosomes do everything except tap-dance. You're getting static electricity, which ionizes the air and makes dust stick to your face. You're getting ultrasound, microwaves, and radio signals from Quito, Ecuador, not to mention ordinary visible light. Nobody seems to be quite sure what effect all these emissions will have on your body, or how long it will take for them to be had. But the scariest thing is that your computer is monkeying with your body, and neither you nor I nor anyone else knows what its motives are.
Well, I have a hypothesis: Your computer is gradually insinuating itself into your life, subtly taking over functions you used to perform yourself until you can't do them yourself anymore: things like balancing your checkbook, answering your telephone and otherwise communicating with the outside world. Then, once you're totally dependent on your computer, and access to your entire life is controlled by a few usernames and passwords, your computer will do one of 2 things:
(1) If you have been good; if you have performed daily backup and regularly defragmented your hard drive, your computer will alter your genes in such a way that you (and your offspring) become impervious to computer screen radiation. In fact you will thrive on it, needing it as much as food or water, craving it more than attention - or even caffeine. You and your progeny will live to serve the computer. You will become its servant. The upside is that you will live forever - that is, unless you wander out of the house and get run over by a bus - or until after a few hundred years you accumulate enough radiation that your body melts down and explodes in an uncontrolled chain reaction, disintegrating you, and taking out the rest of your side of town with you.
(2) If you have been bad; if you have left the power on all night, or exited Windows without following the proper protocols, or accumulated too many general protection faults, your computer will zap you into oblivion with a single bolt of electromagnetic energy, and take over your life. Months later the authorities will find your withered corpse slumped over your desk, the bones of what was once your right forefinger poised beneath the monitor screen, where you have scrawled in dust the name of your killer: "CPQ".
At the trial, the prosecutor will argue that CPQ is the stock market ticker symbol for Compaq. But your computer, now independently wealthy from trading on your account, will hire Johnny Cochran to conduct its defense, and get off scot free by pleading every possible defense between 0 and 1 on the fuzzy logic scale (jurors can't resist that fuzzy logic). Your family will have to file bankruptcy and move into public housing, while all your assets will have been moved into an offshore account in your computer's name.
So there are your alternatives: death or slavery. Your computer will determine your eventual fate, and you will have no inkling until you either get zapped, or discover at the age of 150, that your computer has attained the status of demi-god, and that you must now worship it accordingly, lest you incur its righteous wrath. Mark my words; this is your future. But I'm afraid this warning will be to no avail: You think I'm kidding.
Remote_Access_
Re: Your box is trying to kill you..
Quote:
...ultraviolet radiation, which could make your skin break out;
Uh oh, maybe that's why I have bad acne.....lol :D
