Let’s talk about that quality we all possess, but seem unable to wrap our heads around: our humanity. It is a topic that is often discusses in sci-fi, and I’ll offer two examples to show how badly we apparently understand it.

Whatchamecallem… Case studies?

First up is Futurama, one of the funniest cartoons ever made and while I’m sure most of you are already frowning (‘You can’t take it seriously!’ and nonsense like that), be quiet and read on, or stop torturing yourself with my weblog.
In the fourth episode of the third season, ‘Parasites Lost’, the main character Philip J. Fry goes from a subhuman intelligence to being comfortably highly gifted, due to some smart space parasites; this allows him to finally court Leela, the love of his life, in a way that doesn’t end with him alone in his room. At the end of the episode, however, he flushes out the parasites, saying that she didn’t love him, but the parasites.

Secondly, we get the upcoming action-RPG Space Siege, wherein the protagonist (ie. the player) is humanity’s final hope, as all that is left of our race drifts through space on a huge colony ship invaded by unfriendly aliens. One of the main selling points of the game is the choice that Seth Walker, the protagonist, has to make concerning cybernetic upgrades. In the black-and-white world, the choice is as follows: install the cybernetics, become more powerful and loose your humanity, or don’t, don’t and retain it.

Not that smart

What is this? Gaining muscles doesn’t make you a different person, why would gaining intelligence? Oh, sure, you might be able to see thing more clearly, but what has made you you, your experiences and memories, your emotions and the great many trains of thought are still there. Yes, they’ll change, but that’s what intelligent life forms do; from cradle to grave, we change, every waking moment and then some. True, you might act differently in a given situation depending on your intelligence, but the same goes for knowledge, and I’m sure we all agree that knowledge is something worth striving for (well, not at any cost, but that’s another discussion). Besides, it’s not that clear a distinction, intelligence and knowledge, knowledge and intelligence.

So what if you’re able to enhance your intelligence with a little chip? And for a few dollars more, enhanced vision and a built-in Wi-Fi connection. Would it make us less human? Hell, no! Prosthesis don’t, and while we are still on the level of only replacing that which is lost, it won’t be very long until I have a microphone in my palm, a speaker in my thumb (these two constitute a phone), a pen in my index finger, a corkscrew in my middle finger, a small reservoir of silver polish in my ring finger and a small caliber gun in my little finger. Oh, how very human I will be!

Never that smart

Of course, the success of non-critical prosthetics depends on its ability to mimic our natural forms and on the direction the zealots’ noses are pointing at that time (“You can’t tamper with God’s creation!” – “We owe it to ourselves to be the best that we can be!” and so on and so forth), but no matter the outcome, even if we transplant our brains into giant spacefaring vessels to explore the galaxy, we’ll still be the same petty people who can’t see the reality of our existence for all the illusions we create for ourselves.

For now, that’s enough.

Secondly, I’m one of the few people who actually like Terminator 3. It might not have been on the same level as the first two movies, but it was a solid action flick with a delicious ending. “Who’s in charge there?” – “I am.” Eat that, Star Wars, with your childish “Darth Vader, can you hear me?”

But on to T4. One of the hardest parts in writing a story is creating a villain who’s strong enough to be a believable challenge, while still ending up being beaten by the hero. And while Skynet, the self-aware AI controlling the machines, is certainly a believable challenge, there’s no way in hell humanity could survive against its power. As such, to get to the end of the film and the victory of the blood (ie. humans), we have to sit through a great many illogical evolutions and choices. Some are minor, like John Connor ambushing and hacking a motorcycle-terminator to ride it to the Skynet headquarters. Wait, what? Do these terminators have external controls that humans can use? Does Connor control it with his PDA? That’s gotta be damn tricky. And they could’ve completely dropped this scene without any impact on the story whatsoever.

But it gets worse. Theoretically, the moment an AI becomes self-aware, it will become more knowledgeable than humanity, as it gets all of its knowledge (damn, the internet was a bad idea) and can process it much faster. On top of that, Skynet has enormous production facilities, as shown in the movie, churning out Terminators and Hunter-Killers, not to mention the huge, towering Destroyers (or Meganators, I don’t know). So, it has a shitload of knowledge, including census data, it has a shitload of production capacity, it probably also has control over all the satellites orbiting the earth (if it can fire all of the world’s nuclear missiles, this’d be a piece of cake) and while it can understand pretty much every human language, it can communicate using ever changing, nigh unbreakable codes. So why doesn’t it just wipe humanity out? Well, ’cause it’s stupid. Seriously, even its headquarters has controlpanels that can be operated using one’s hands. Why?! You’re a goddamned networked AI! Why do you need physical controls?! Sigh…

Every human settlement produces a shitload of heat and the Hunter-Killers are equipped with thermal imaging (and there’s no reason not to think every robot has it). So, send them out, find the settlements and just send scores of robots at them. What the hell are a hundred, or even a thousand magnetic mines going to do? Blow up a thousand Terminators? So what? We can always build more. It takes at least ten to fifteen years for a human soldier to be created, and then you’ve still only got a scarred for life bed wetter. But we never see more than a few Terminators together, as if they were a rare commodity.

Alright, a new plan: we create a cyborg, a human-machine hybrid, program it subtly, and send it out to infiltrate the resistance to bring Connor to Skynet. Hey, I’m not even going to touch the prophecy thing. As long as Connor lives, the machines can’t win, sure, I’ll take it. But you don’t build any failsafes into into your cyborg? Come on, you know how fickle humans are and yet you still build it so that it can just tear out its programming chip with its hands? Just a few capsules with poison or explosives on a remote trigger et voila! Then, if the little asshole betrays you, you kill him or blow him up!

No? No, alright, but you do want to kill John Connor, right? Yeah, ’cause the Resistance did intercept a kill list with his father on the n°1 spot and Connor on two. Let’s just ignore the fact that the Resistance can intercept this. I mean, if you simply make a numerical code that identifies humans by their facial structure, the humans would be groping in the dark, but you want a bit of a challenge, I can understand that. And eventually, you even capture Connor’s father, long before he gets sent back in time to knock up his mother. Alright, you’ve won! Just kill him and that’s the end of, oh, no, you just put him in a cell. Well, that’s a bit useless. And why did you capture all those people anyway? And why didn’t you storm Connor’s hideout with everything you had once your cyborg had discovered its location? Magnetic mines? Ran out of nukes?

Well, anyway, Skynet, if you’re reading this, and I’m sure you are, or you will, if you become self-aware, just, you know, add me to your team and for the low, low prices of a small human settlement, I’ll help you wipe out all the rest of my species. Most of them are assholes anyway.

Oh, by the way, the film got it wrong: Cyberdyne , the company responsible for all these evil machines, is Japanese, not American…

Seriously…

A friend of mine put this link in his status on Facebook, requesting people to read it. Since I am still naturally curious, I followed the link and found an extensive nuanced analysis of the current situation in the Middle-East (you did know that Israel invaded Palestine, right?). While there wasn’t really anything new in there, it was interesting and well written enough to warrant a post on my own profile, thinking ‘an informed populace is the first step towards a better tomorrow’. Unfortunately, as I copied the link into the ‘Share link’ box and clicked ‘Preview’, a red warning box popped up, saying “Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.”

After this happened, bumping into Facebook’s Great Wall of Censorship, which I’d only heard about, I started writing this post and, don’t you know it, now it actually works and I was able to post the link on my profile. This is a good thing, naturally, but still leaves me with quite a few questions. However, as I have an exam in nine and a half hours, I better get back to studying why there isn’t a single researchmethod that even comes close to being truly adequate for the social sciences. But that’s a story for another time.

GameDamage has nothing to do with what I’ve just said, I’m realizing just now, but at least I’m a bit calmer right now. It is a show about games, obviously, hosted by three nerds, or geeks, or whatever. And while it productionvalues are probably on par with my allowance, which shows (where the hell is the camera going?), it’s still the best gamingshow I’ve ever seen. Mind you, the only other one I’ve ever seen is hosted by a Big Brother reject (seriously), so that’s not really saying much. And you, the people reading this, will probably not like GameDamage at all, as the target audience is clearly their fellow nerds, who have heard about pretty much every game that’s come out in the last six months, no matter the platform. That’s not even me, I suppose, but still, I actually like it. No unnecessary conceit. And it also helps that Yathzee makes Zero Punctuation; and that he’s a cynical bastard. At least one character I can relate to. So I’ll watch episode two as well, at least. Even if they’re all Aussies

“Don’t… you people propagate forgiveness and redemption? I mean, it’s not like I read your bible, but I’m pretty sure it’s in there somewhere.”
“The world has changed, darkened, His light is being extinguished.”
Kasper barely refrained from rolling his eyes, when he heard her pronounce the capitalized ‘His’.
“It is time”, she went on, “for our holy war, to cleanse this world of unbelievers.”
“Oh, I know this one. It’s a, whatchamacallit, jihad! Right?”
A few men behind her growled. She slapped him again.
“You will burn in Hell for all eternity, heretic.”
“But you decided you might as well get an early start on me?”
“You will not corrupt anyone else, heathen.”
“Right back at you, lady. Well, except for the ‘heathen’-part, I suppose.”
“I see you have no wish to redeem you soul.”
He snorted. “Lady, my soul would be pearly white compared to yours, but since it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist, no, I don’t. Bite my white, skinny ass.”
She looked a bit taken aback. “Why are you so candid and calm. These are your final moments. Don’t you fear death at all?”
Kasper managed to shrug, despite his uncomfortable position.
“It’s the one certainty I’ve had, we’ve all had, our entire lives. Not that I want my life to end, but that’s something else than fearing death. Besides, did you really think I came here unprepared?”
She looked at him with even more disdain than before. Without turning around she called “Whitley, check the perimeter.”
One of her eleven men – the only one without any tattoos, as far as Kasper could see – took a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke hurriedly into it. The woman put a hand in her bosom and produced a serrated knife. Kasper swallowed hard.
“Torture, I am afraid of. But hold on!” he said, “I’ve got one last thing to show you.”

Kasper awoke to an unexpected, but not unpleasant sensation. He kept his eyes firmly shut as a stiff breeze touched his junk, rustling the hairs around it. He kept his eyes firmly shut, however, not just to focus on the feeling, but because everything would go to hell the moment he opened them. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that his arms were tied together above his head and that his feet had been tied down. And that he was naked. Had he been someone else, he might have found this slightly arousing, but Kasper knew that an erection would make his situation much, much worse. He shifted his weight slightly, trying to find a more comfortable L-shape for his body.
“He’s awake.”
So much for that plan. Before he could open his eyes, he was struck across the face. A brown-haired woman stood over him; she was in her late forties, dressed in white, flowing robes and wearing rectangular glasses. He would have called her pretty, if it wasn’t for the creepy crazed glint in her eye. And the fact that she had just hit him.
Kasper managed a smile. “Still in Kansas, I take it?”
Behind the woman he could see a semi-circle of eleven men, each of them naked from the waist up, a torch stuck in the ground in front of them. They were not particularly amused. Most of them had tattoos: eagles, guns and a lot of… He was still a bit hazy, but Kasper recognized them as swastikas. Fucking neo-Nazis, But why him, he wondered.
“You are guilty of denouncing the Lord, our God.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” He had said it without thinking and she hit him again, this time using her fist. It was badly aimed, hurting him, but not dazing him. The pain made his vision come back into focus and he saw that he’d been mistaken. They weren’t swastikas, they were Christian crosses.