America’s basic introduction to computer came via sci-fi movies and TV shows. The man-made brains had blinking lights and whistles. Worse they disobeyed Isaac Assimov’s primary commandments of robotics.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
HAL is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 was a killer and Toyota’s racing accelerator is another example of machine hate man. I’ve discarded many modern technological devices. No TV. No stereo. No vacuum cleaner. In fact my apartment is devoid of almost any machine sheltering the possibility of a malevolent intelligence, except for my Mac Ibook G4. It’s white. It has a pleasing shape. If it had a hole I might even have an affair with it. It doesn’t even mind my cheating on it with porn, which is almost worrying considering the hours that I’ve malingered on sordid websites.
Oh the inhumanity.
The machine is smarter than man.
But I have a plan to beat them, because the first rule of computers is that all mistakes happen someplace between the fingers and the keyboards, so my strategy is to reduce the keys. Less keys. Less mistakes. Less danger from the Judgment day of the Exterminator.
