Planet of The Apes, and Robots, and Dolphins
Honda is now making robots. Actual little human-shaped machines that can live in your house with you.
Here is the text of the full-page ad in USA Today:
We're Building A Dream,
One robot at a time.
The dream was simple. Design a robot that, one day,
could duplicate the complexities of human motion and
actually
help people.
An easy task? Hardly. But after more than 15 years
of research and development, the result is ASIMO, an
advanced
robot with unprecedented human-like abilities.
ASIMO walks forward and backward, turns corners,
and, amazingly, goes up and down stairs with ease. All
with
a remarkable sense of strength and balance.
The future of this exciting technology is even more
promising. ASIMO has the potential to respond to simple
voice
commands, recognize faces, carry loads and even
push wheeled objects. This means that, one day, ASIMO
could be quite
useful in some very important tasks. Like
assisting the elderly, and even helping with household
chores. In essence,
ASIMO might serve as another set of
eyes, ears, and legs for all kinds of people in need.
All of this represents the steps we're taking to develop
products that make our world a better place. And
in
ASIMO's case, it's a giant step in the right direction.
I wouldn't have expected robots to have come from Honda. I mean, I always knew that one day robots would start being
mass-produced and placed in homes across America, because it's the first stage of their plan to take over the world.
They start off with cute little midget-sized robots to "help out around the house". It's "an extra set of eyes and ears".
The next model is a little bigger, a little more advanced. Maybe you need help changing a flat or rooting up that stump
in the front yard.
Then it's hey, doing my income taxes is a bitch....it's too bad I don't have a super-intelligent robot to do them for
me.
Golly, my house has termites, but it costs too much to reinforce the foundation....I wish I had a giant super-strong
robot to hold it up while I did the work myself.
So you see where this is going. In less than a generation we could have a race of giant, super-intelligent robots hunting
us down like little....fleshy...non-robots.
There's danger everywhere. They're teaching gorillas sign language, which by itself might not seem so bad. It also might
not seem like such a big deal that they're teaching sign language, of a sort, to dolphins. I guess it hasn't occurred to anyone
what might happen when the gorillas and dolphins start talking to each other. Especially after the robots start taking over.
There's a private company in America that's building a ship to fly into space. It's got a rotor on top and it's called
Rotora or something like that. One day, that ship or something like it will make space travel commonplace.
There is a researcher at MIT who is working on a way to send things back through time. The theory is that you could turn
on the machine, leave it on for a week or a month or a year, and then send messages back to any point at which it was turned
on.
Another researcher at Texas A&M University just cloned a cat. It's good news, I guess, if you like cats.
But pretty soon there will be giant super-intelligent robots co-ordinating armies of time-traveling, talking gorillas
and dolphins. They could wipe out all of human history just like that weird Lincoln Memorial scene in the Tim Burton version
of Planet of The Apes. Well, except there would be robots and dolphins there, too. And then they'll just start cloning mindless
human slave-drones.
And maybe no one else knows about it. Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe if I don't sound the alarm soon, we'll all be run
by robots made by Honda.
Helpful Links
This is ASIMO's home site
Koko the Gorilla Who Knows Sign Language
Sign Language Communication With Elephants! It's worse than we thought!
Building a common language with dolphins
The Time Travel Institute
Space Travel & Tourism!
The Human Cloning Institute
Everything I Know About Quantum Physics
String Theory postulates that subatomic particle are not points, but strings about 1 Planc length long. The rate at which
strings vibrate can generate the properties of all known particles. String Theory is fairly recent. It helped close the conceptual
gulf between relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
The four fundamental forces of interaction in Quantum Physics are gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and the weak
nuclear force.
The Pauli Exclusion Principle states that no two Fermions can occupy a given quantum state at the same time.
That's all I know.
Now That I'm Older
Somebody graduating high school this year would have been born the year I graduated high school. I'm two high school
seniors old.
I guess it's not so bad. I don't really feel all that old. In fact, I look at some kids graduating high school and to
me they look like they're barely out of diapers. If I watch a TV show that has characters who are in high school, or even
college, I don't really relate to them at all. I might as well be watching a show about another culture or even an alien species.
High school seems to be a lot about status and roles and cliques and popularity. In a way, real life is much the same,
but the difference is that when you're an adult you can live in denial about it. I mean, there are still jocks and potheads
and nerds, but they all live in different parts of town: The jocks are driving forklifts and living in neighborhoods with
instant check cashing places, the potheads are all homeless, and the nerds live in gated communities that keep out the jocks
and the potheads.
In high school, of course, it's different. Everyone gets thrown together and have to live alongside each other and build
up a great resentment for each other. Ideally, instead of resentment, this would teach kids that class and status don't matter
and that, in the end, everyone is pretty much the same. In reality, though, most kids come away with the notion that class
and status are all that matter and that anyone different than you should be stuffed in a trashcan.
They must learn these lessons well, because they carry it with them long after high school. People are always trying
to be popular, even grown folks, long after they get out into the world. And people are always trying to be rich and have
more than other people, and even most folks who say that material things don't matter are only saying that because they're
pissed that they don't have any material things.
And then there's the folks who don't "fit in" or "belong". We all like to think that this is a small minority of mutants
with inferiority complexes, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: No one fits in or belongs. Ask anyone, especially
a teenager, if they ever feel like they fit in or belong. Almost every single one will say no, they never feel that way. All
but one in about a hundred thousand will say that, and that odd one will just say that they never really thought about it.
And guess which one is happy and well-adjusted?
Yeah, when I think about my age, I don't really feel old. I feel glad that high school is over.
