Zweite Dämmerung: an essay on the apocalypse
Zweite Dämmerung:
An Essay on the Apocalypse
By Kyle Sweeney
"From the moment when the machine made its first appearance it was clear to all
thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for
human inequality, had disappeared."
~ George Orwell 1984
Throughout history, the human race has become the most intelligent and supreme
form of life on the planet. We have brought forth many changes of which we can be
proud, and some of which make us ashamed. Our renaissances or the transitional period
between ignorance and genius come only when a certain formula is followed precisely.
We have undergone many semi-renaissance stages, but have had only one full
awakening. Since the birth of the ENIAC we have been waiting and technology has
become more complicated than anyone would have ever imagined. Our terrorism, our
government, and our everyday lives now run on the internet. The purpose of this essay is
to inform the planet Earth of our leap into the next renaissance.
Since the release of the first Personal Computer (PC), computer ownership has
grown exponentially, and technology has made several great advances in the past twenty
years. We have been warned of our advances in the film The Matrix. In the movie, after
the birth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the machines that man had created had begun to
overpower humankind. Soon, a war had started, and man had resorted to nuclear
warfare. Destroying the atmosphere as to take out the Sun, the primary source of power
for the machines. After that the machines had begun their reign of terror over the human
race. They were able to harness the power given off by the human body and were able to
insert the enslaved humankind into the false reality of a computer program. The chilling
reality is that with technology advancing well past the twenty-first century, we are gazing
upon the second dawn, the twilight of the new beginning, the beginning of the end.
AZUMOV, created by Honda, is known worldwide as the most advanced and
humanoid robot on the face of the Earth. With superior motor functions, the ability to
comprehend and recognize a wide vocabulary, obtain voice and visual recognition.
AZUMOV is Honda’s contribution to residential servitude. Coincidentally, B1663R, of
Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix was also a butler type model that inspired the
first uprising of machines. This brings about the point that humans need machines to
live. At any given time we are interacting with more machines than we can comprehend,
and their sole purpose is to make life easier for us, the “higher beings.” Since the
invention of the wheel we have been inventing things that make work and labor more
bearable for the human condition. We as animals, get tired, while the machines do not,
we know emotion, while the machines do not, we can turn them off whenever we feel
like it right?... Wrong! Electricity is one of our staples. We need it to provide us with
our heat, our purified water, our cooked meals. We have given ourselves a higher
standard of living by developing these networked machines. In return, we have become
accustomed to the luxuries they provide us with. With the invention of the ARPANET in
the 1970s, we have since made breakthrough after breakthrough involving what is now
known as the Internet. Nearly all computers plug into the Internet, which makes the
world such a smaller place, as is evident when we speak to people in Hamburg, Boston,
Budapest, and Warsaw all at the same time.
Now take this scenario. AZUMOV becomes as affordable as a PC, so the general
public buy them to use them as residential servants. Now, as every good computer
programmer knows, with new technology come new bugs and glitches. Stable versions
of software aren’t usually coded until the third version. With the mass production of an
android it is completely possible and probable that many bugs, glitches, and unwanted
behavior will arise with the release of the first public version of Honda’s robots. This
could be as simple as a glitch in the walking function or a complex as forgetting to carry
a one in the emotions category, either way the machine would become a danger not only
to itself but to those around it. At any moment the family butler could turn into a ruthless
killing machine, hell-bent on destroying those who seek to turn it into scrap for not
cleaning the bathroom as fast as they had anticipated.
Machines are much stronger and faster than the average or advanced human, they
don’t know their own strength without precise calculations, and they can move faster
than we could ever imagine, they also need no sleep, and hardly no maintenance (unless
they are built poorly, or are overworked). This makes them a very strong adversary, and
if Honda manufactures AZUMOV to the public, you can bet millions that the Department
of Defense is going to be looking into buying the rights to manufacture them as ways to
“keep our troops out of battle.” If it’s one thing that I’m weary of, it’s a toaster with the
ability to think and put a bullet in my head.
George Orwell’s novel of a Socialist world 1984 introduced the “Big Brother” or
overseer into the modern science fiction novel. This has been brought to your attention
because the computer networks of today are a modern from of “Big Brother,” where
anyone can watch you. Millions of online spies gather on the servers every day as is
evident by the rising in computer crimes. Who’s to say that when the computers start
thinking for themselves that they won’t go looking for your bank account number, or
your credit information, or try to kill you. Remember HAL9000? Or for our readers who
have seen Resident Evil, Red Queen? It’s only a matter of time before computers begin
to think for themselves and think that humans are expendable because we are so
abundant.
We create computers to monitor our computers, and machines to fix our
machines. We operate airplanes that can carry airplanes, and bombs to destroy other
bombs (that, I’ve never understood) but since the advent of the simple machines, we have
been working to create the most efficient tools on the planet. The computer is our
greatest achievement.
In 2003 Lucas Arts created a video game titled Star Wars Galaxies, a large multi-
player game that allowed people to compete from all over the world. The game’s
“Galaxies” are stored on a central group of computers called a server, which allows all of
the players to connect to it. The normal computer connected to the server can hold
around 1GB (gigabyte or 1,000,000,000 bytes) of RAM (Random Access Memory).
However, the computers that run the game (the servers) are running nearly 800 GB, they
are about 800 times as advanced as the normal PC, which makes them not only near the
bleeding edge of technology, but the Alpha to the PC’s Omega. If man can create a
computer that is 800 times more powerful, then it can definitely create a Humanoid robot
with the ability to think on its own and be able to tell that humans are not efficient
creatures, when this is recognized, we may become terminated. Sound familiar? That’s
because it is. In the movie The Terminator a robot is sent to destroy a human who gives
birth to the leader of a rebellion of humans who fight the machines of the future. It could
be possible that glitches in software or, humans tampering with software could provide
many dangers to other people.
Soon, there will be many new advances in the fields of computers, robotics,
engineering, and many other science related fields. As these new doors open up, new
exploits, problems and solutions will become noticed and applied. These applications
will eventually lead to the creation of an independent intelligence that will operate under
the control of noone. It’s creator will inevitably be responsible for the destruction of
humankind as the machines will rise up and be our slaves no more.
