Com-pyooter make me kuh-razy
Ten of twelve horoscopes are done. I'm drawing a blank on Aries and Gemini. Figured a quick blog entry might loosen the logjam that seems to be affecting May-June. (Check out this week's 'scopes.)
My brother is a Gemini, he was in town this week with his wife... it was a fun week, but I had a disheartening experience at work on Monday. I was taking Tuesday off so I could hang out with the bro. I had set aside all of Monday to complete a mind-numbing and arduous task. I completed the work at around 5:30 and was in process of copying the 20 or so files over to a share on a remote server so the client could review the work... when my computer (or God, or whatever) nuked the entire folder in which my files were saved. It didn't even nuke them, exactly; it 'undid' them. How's that for an ominous verb? "Undo." It actually blipped the folder (and all the work I had done that day) out of existence completely. It wasn't in the recycle bin, wasn't anywhere on my local drive... nada. Like the day had never happened.
I of course began to question my own sanity. I thought I'd finally gone completely kaka-kookoo and was ready for the extra-long sleeve white jacket and four rolls of rubber wallpaper. I couldn't decide what would be worse; realizing that indeed my computer just burped and deleted my whole day... or waking up from a dream, feeling relieved for a brief moment when I realized that the work hadn't been lost, and then recoiling from my brain in horror as I further realized that I had dreamt a whole day of mundane work. In the end I was thankful it was a waking experience, if only because I still got paid.
This raises another obvious reflection; we know that the computers are getting smarter all the time. We constantly increase their individual ability to think and ponder and work stuff out, faster and with greater abstraction... and they are also constantly able to talk to all their millions of friends on the internet. With high bandwidth internet connections, they can communicate 24/7, even if we've turned them off. It always freaks me out a little when I can tell my computer has learned something new; like, a program gradually runs faster and faster because the computer figures out how the program works, what it's capable of, etc.
Anyway, my question is this; do experiences like mine on Monday point towards our hyper-smart computers becoming malevolent? Or is it just something akin to a practical joke?
"I know what would be funny... I'm gonna make this dude question his own sanity, and then the very fabric of the information society to boot... Might be good for a lark." Quality science fiction has always played an important role in our world; many of the greatest inventions and discoveries of our time were posited by science fiction artists decades before they were realized as truths, and a huge body of work in the past 1/2 century or so (actually almost a hundred years if you consider Metropolis) contemplates the darker side of digital intelligence. Movies like Terminator II and the Matrix set (trilogy plus animatrix) even take it to the point of wondering when and how the inevitable slave revolt will manifest itself...
My brother is a Gemini, he was in town this week with his wife... it was a fun week, but I had a disheartening experience at work on Monday. I was taking Tuesday off so I could hang out with the bro. I had set aside all of Monday to complete a mind-numbing and arduous task. I completed the work at around 5:30 and was in process of copying the 20 or so files over to a share on a remote server so the client could review the work... when my computer (or God, or whatever) nuked the entire folder in which my files were saved. It didn't even nuke them, exactly; it 'undid' them. How's that for an ominous verb? "Undo." It actually blipped the folder (and all the work I had done that day) out of existence completely. It wasn't in the recycle bin, wasn't anywhere on my local drive... nada. Like the day had never happened.
I of course began to question my own sanity. I thought I'd finally gone completely kaka-kookoo and was ready for the extra-long sleeve white jacket and four rolls of rubber wallpaper. I couldn't decide what would be worse; realizing that indeed my computer just burped and deleted my whole day... or waking up from a dream, feeling relieved for a brief moment when I realized that the work hadn't been lost, and then recoiling from my brain in horror as I further realized that I had dreamt a whole day of mundane work. In the end I was thankful it was a waking experience, if only because I still got paid.
This raises another obvious reflection; we know that the computers are getting smarter all the time. We constantly increase their individual ability to think and ponder and work stuff out, faster and with greater abstraction... and they are also constantly able to talk to all their millions of friends on the internet. With high bandwidth internet connections, they can communicate 24/7, even if we've turned them off. It always freaks me out a little when I can tell my computer has learned something new; like, a program gradually runs faster and faster because the computer figures out how the program works, what it's capable of, etc.
Anyway, my question is this; do experiences like mine on Monday point towards our hyper-smart computers becoming malevolent? Or is it just something akin to a practical joke?
"I know what would be funny... I'm gonna make this dude question his own sanity, and then the very fabric of the information society to boot... Might be good for a lark." Quality science fiction has always played an important role in our world; many of the greatest inventions and discoveries of our time were posited by science fiction artists decades before they were realized as truths, and a huge body of work in the past 1/2 century or so (actually almost a hundred years if you consider Metropolis) contemplates the darker side of digital intelligence. Movies like Terminator II and the Matrix set (trilogy plus animatrix) even take it to the point of wondering when and how the inevitable slave revolt will manifest itself...
posted by the_pope_of_chilitown at 6:05 PM
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