Drop some philosophical knowledge on us Neo.
I know some people loved the Matrix and didn’t love Matrix Reloaded, but I loved it for many reasons, so therefore it is great because I said it was. If you don’t like it, go to Rotten Tomatoes and let your incorrect opinion be ignored by the masses. Regardless of your feelings about the Matrix and its philosophical discussions, there is one scene in which Neo is discussing with the head chancellor (or whatever leadery name you want to call him) about the relationship between man and machine. Despite the fact that machines were currently on the way to kill them, and they should despise machines, the chancellor made the point that we need machines as much as they need us. At the moment, the machines below them where giving them power for their lights and their heat and other essential things they needed to survive.
Maybe someday, the machines will become sentient (Hollywood seems to think they will) and rise up and rebel against us, but we really do depend quite on them quite a lot, especially these days. Think about how different your life would be right now if you didn’t have the internet (No Ben’s Bitter Blog? How would I be as bitter right now without it?), phones, televisions, heaters, electricity, toasters, cars, refrigerators, or your Brookstone Zero Gravity Massage Chair? How would you ever relax at the end of a hideous day of farming or working at the General Store? What would you sit down and stare at on the couch after your long commute in horse traffic on the I-405 Chisolm Trail without your TV? How would you exercise at 3:30 am at the Old West 24 Hour Fitness without your Stair Stepper 2000 telling you how many miles you have to go?
How would you ever do without this fancy machine?
The Head Chancellor in the Matrix had a point. Regardless of how little we “think” we don’t depend on technology, we do. And a lot more than we think. Instead of fighting them and trying to unplug them from my life, I have embraced machines. In fact, I’ve often talked about how badly I want to be a cyborg. Metal knees, metal back, metal heart please (so I can stop all the feelings except for the bitter). Social occasions, would be much improved because my metal brain would not compute what you are saying and just ignore it, or spout out, “Does not compute! Does not compute!” and when I get tired of listening to you for 20 minutes, or grew tired of your idiotic questions (do you use a 5W 30 synthetic or a 15W 40 Conventional to lubricate those joints?), I would have an easy out(battery needs recharging…gottttaaa goooo).
Gotta go, my battery is wearing down.
Why should we fight our relationship with machines anyways? We so closely resemble them nowadays that we are starting to grow and learn like them.
We don’t evolve, grow or learn, we upgrade. We don’t have flaws, we have bugs. We don’t have sickness, or illness, we have viruses. We aren’t made up of DNA and cells, we are just a bunch of code, a bunch of 1’s and 0’s.
I don’t look at people as a better or worse as they age (or more bitter if we are talking about me), I just look at myself as Bitter Ben version 42.8.248 I don’t look at myself at being more proficient at writing, I just got a more efficient Word Processor that has more features added and some subtracted. My spelling program is already linked to Google or spell check, so I don’t need that program. I don’t ignore my supervisor any more over time, it’s just that my ear program has heard the same algorithm way too many times and my Ignorage 8.0 program has learned to ignore the Clique motivational phrases (Keep working smarter, not harder.)
Supposedly, we are superior in every way to robots and androids and they should just be left to the conventional tasks that are just too hard or mundane for us right? Like running assembly lines or making sure the heat and lights stay on? But they are getting better at thinking. The IBM SuperComputer beat the one guy in chess. And my computer can spell way better than me (as evidenced by all the red squiggly lines all over the pre edit of this post). Why are we fighting against them? Let’s just upgrade ourselves by combining with them and become Transformers.
That way, when the Chinese President comes to visit Seattle and decides to shut down the Freaking I-405, so he can treat it like his personal Autobahn if he wants (have you heard of helicopters Mr. President? They don’t even require a road!), I don’t have to wait bitterly in traffic for 2 1/2 hours. I can just transform and rollout (Take the more direct route home) or better yet, launch a full out assault with the laser beams attached to my head on the Chinese president’s entourage . If you’re gonna shut down traffic, might as well shut it down with style.
If you’re gonna mess with traffic, mess it up with explosions.
Join the revolution. You can fight against it, or just embrace it. Machines are getting upgraded all the time. And if I can combine with them to watch TV on my own arm screen or be able to transform into a couch to become even more lazy, I’m there. That to me is the real upgrade.
ARRRGGGHHHH
Bitter Ben 42.8.248