The corrugated garage-type door open for business....with enough scooters and people passing that it was hard to hear as the small lady pushed the beads on the abacus sideways left and right for about ten seconds and then said....."Twenty dollar"....or something. Maybe I was taken to the cleaners....maybe not....but the gold locket was mine and I was satisfied.
Earlier in my life it was a big deal to get that small hand-held calculator where you put the stylus tip in the hole and moved one column up and another down until you had added or subtracted what you want. Then the battery operated calculators appeared everywhere
As a junior in high school I tagged along with my friend who was a Pitt student to his computer lab where he had a stack of perforated cards about the size of a lotto card and fed them to the giant computer that really didn't seem to do much at all. Today I wouldn't be surprised to see a boy prodding a water buffalo along a muddy road with a stick in one hand and an iPhone in the other that contained more information that a human mind could ever hold.
There's been more than one computer today that was labeled 'The Beast'....'humorously' alluding to Bible prophecy. Two decades ago they were feeding information into one of those 'Beasts'...weighing the 'good' and the 'bad' of religion to determine whether or not it was a value to society.
Everyone it seems today is chiming in on artificial intelligence....amazed on the one hand the economic and pragmatic benefits that it can give....but adding a warning in the small print that it may turn on mankind and destroy it.
Back in the 70s someone pointed out that if you assign the number 6 to the letter A....and 12 to the letter B....and 18 to the letter C....and so on....that the word COMPUTER adds up to 666. Well so does the name KISSINGER....and who knows how many more words and phrases....but all this speculation aside.....it is a hard fact of reality that giving a computer its own decision-making identity....is in effect creating a decision-maker void in its space of any conscience....that theoretically could be filled with something from the spirit world....should that 'something from the spirit world' exist. (SPOILER....it does exist!)
The following is some of the dialogue between the astronaut Dave and the HAL 9000 computer from the 1968 film....2001 A Space Odyssey.
Dave: "Do you read me HAL?"
HAL: "Affirmative Dave, I read you."
Dave: "Open the pod bay doors HAL."
HAL: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Dave: "What's the problem?"
HAL: "I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."
Note: I watched 2001 A Space Odyssey again....after posting this. AI will play a part in the dystopia that is ahead. There is little doubt about that now. I think that it was about seven years ago that I posted that there will be no stopping the potential catastrophes that drone warfare will bring. Axiom for AI....AI + the human mind = catastrophe. Axion for drone tech....Drone - the human mind = catastrophe.
