Because We Can

Once again I found myself watching a television program on what scientists and engineers are working on in terms of future developments. Some of it seemed good until they got to the part where one guy admitted we will come to a time when the robots will be so vastly intelligent, it will be a given they will try to “replace” us. In fact this fellow was so certain of this, he was working on ways to make himself into a cyborg, more or less a human combination with a robot.

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Android Robot that already exists, and talks, photo from Wikimedia.

Personally I do not look forward to a world where robots do darn near everything, and certainly not a world where they are threatening to take over. Some scientists apparently accept this as an inevitable fact and figure if somebody is going to do it, it may as well be them.

In this world there will be elites who have robots preform many tasks, including putting their children to bed. There will be robots monitoring our every move, and reporting such in a way cameras cannot. Why are we so scared of aliens, when we are manufacturing our own aggressors and giving them the tools to dominate?

Similarly we are working on ways for humans to live longer. While this might be great in theory, we are already at a position globally where our population levels are exceeding our ability to cope. I am not even referring to providing food, I refer to our lack of ability to control our own waste and pollution.

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This is Dhaka, but could be any city. They are all getting larger and more crowded, photo from Wikimedia.

Asthma, Childhood cancers, and so on, are all on the rise. Some blame our lack of finding a cure, I blame our willingness to create air pollution, and insistence on the use of chemicals. The United Nations warned us some time ago that our growing population levels are the biggest risk to our continued survival, aside from nuclear threat. We have done very little to address this, and many people are not even aware that this is an issue as most media sources sweep it under the rug, and politicians mostly don’t want to deal with it. So why are we trying to live longer, when increased lifespan is the main reason the globe is over populated? Over fishing, deforestion, are names given because we don’t want to accuse ourselves of eating too much fish, building too many homes, or having too many people.