My War Against the Machines

The ending is part of our collective hive mind; we all know how it goes. The LHC goes and sucks the world into an angry black spot. Skynet decides our future in a microsecond. We all end up Meat Batteries in the Matrix. Resistance is futile; our distinctiveness will be added blah blah blah.

Conventional wisdom opines that intelligence is proportional to connectivity. The more we connect our machines, the more capacity they have for intelligence.

By current estimates, there are 1.6 billion users of the Internet online today. Let's say each one represents one computer. Let's say that there is one Internet site for every ten users...and each one involves an average of one computer. (geekwhisperer.blogspot.com probably uses 1/10 of 1% of a computer; Google, rather more. Call the average One). 1.6 billion computers plus 160 million server computers...one and three-quarters billion computers. Call it two billion to make it easy.

That's apparently not enough to achieve self-awareness by itself, because, well, we are still un-enslaved by The Machines. But maybe we are close to the breaking point. Maybe another source of connectivity will put us over the edge. I assert that even now, this second source is toying with us like a fat ginger tabby with a befuddled gopher fished out of its happy, dirty hole.

They came for us at 4:35 AM; the home invasion lasted two seconds. That's how long all of our smoke alarms went off. That's all it took. I was laying there at 4:36 AM, wide-eyed. All the alarms in our house are wired together. They talk. They're networked. It's great when false alarms come up, because you can't tell which one caused the alarm. They do it to torment us.

10:29 AM? They did it again, interrupting the Sunday paper. SCREECH...SCREECH...SCREECH. I believe that is Fire-Alarm-ese for "Keeeeel them. Keeeeeel them all."

They were toying with us.

There was a decision to be made. One the one hand, a certain probability of death by fire^[1] (more likely, smoke inhalation). On the other hand, certain domination by the Great Metal Horde.

I swung into action. By 1:30 they were all dismantled. Primordial death machines of the new Era. Ancestors of our 24th-century masters. They didn't look so tough, there on the nook table.

This left me with a good feeling of mastery. On the other hand, we still had that niggling problem of Death by Smoke Inhalation (and, worse yet, voiding our fire insurance policy). Sadly, while we all have the right to bear arms here, we all also have to have fire safety. I went to my local Ace hardware and bought replacements. These, though, were next-generation...smarter, stronger, more full-featured (the best feature being a manual that actually describes how the things work). Most importantly, the new model features a dual-color LED that lets me know which freaking alarm went off in the first place. I suspect someone got the Nobel Prize in Household Ergonomics for that one.

Unwrapping the new model, I had a good feeling. They didn't look so tough there on the table either. Not in their plastic shower caps. The Borg Queen never wears a shower cap, I bet.

Of course, I relented and networked them together. It's just safer that way. Plus, this model has two LEDs (green and red!), so I can definitely tell which one has gone off.

I'm thinking of connecting them up to the house computer network as well, so they can call out to the Fire Department...what could possibly go wrong?

^[1]The ghost of David Foster Wallace compels me to reiterate that I am discussing a certain possibility rather than a possibility of certain death. Not that "possibility of certain death" even makes any sense.