While the chaps were all-consumed in the thought of the gorgeous woman, wreathing in agony of unanswered, unrequited love, lost in wishful thinking, the others were predicting world-domination by machines, the slavery of man at the hands of a man-made creation.
It didn't take long. Half a century, and the machine-intelligence had dwarfed millions of years of nature's brainchild, the human brain. The sad part being that it all took place right under man's nose. In fact, man even gave things that all-important impetus, that branded on all of humanity's forehead.... "You're in control." All that even before anyone came to know about the rise of a god-like power. The Internet. You, your presence, your absence, images, clothed ones, nude ones, clandestine ones, innocent ones, the ones in which you pouted, the ones in which you forgot to, personal information, the things you never told anyone, all locked, and uploaded, into some cloud. And you were thinking that there's something called privacy. All while sitting in front of a screen. Brilliant.
But someone somewhere got to know that no one was safe. The news spread to another one of them, the whistle-blowers. Then it spread like wildfire, only that it was late, perhaps, a little too late. We had already turned into holographic projections by then, whatever this 'we' was.
It was some while ago that the ads came to notice. Why were some of them so resoundingly recognizable? It felt like a scheme, like someone, in this case, as it happened to be, something was playing foul, subliminally programming the population into servitude. You could hear them in the trains, the platforms, planes, the radio, movies, and oh yes, the TV. You could turn a deaf ear to them when they played about, but the brain still picked it up. You didn't know that, of course, Not consciously at least. But the seeds had been planted. It's not like the Terminator movie, where a weird program took over military control, nuked the whole planet, nearly bringing humanity to the ground. Nah, that would be too much trouble, wastage of resources and energy. All the machine had to do was tap into its favourite, and most potent weapon. The human mind. Which had been handed to it by mankind itself. So all easy-peasy.
A bit about the ads. Men sitting at high places thought that playing them would help them fill their coffers faster. Alas. Fill their coffers they did. But that was just a bone that the network threw at the dogs. And how the big boys scampered to it, the little bones.
We though we could capture our imagination on screens, make them as realistic as possible, with 3D, 4D, 5D, dimensions that we had little understanding about. But the terms seemed fancy, high-tech. And so, our eternal quest to one-up each other became our unbecoming. As it is, when granted Carte Blanche, unlimited freedom, what we do is.... well, we fight. Recognizing this, the enemy accepted our gift-wrapped defeat graciously, effortlessly.
Go back! Make something. Anything, solid, hard, tangible, tactile, smooth, round, beautiful. Because it's going to happen. Our freedom won't be ours for too long. We have fought for it in small clans, nations, communities. Pointlessly. That was hard when we fought each other. Next time, it won't be us on the other side. It will be an unrecognizable, almost god-like enemy, of course just in case the aliens don't get to earth before that.
It didn't take long. Half a century, and the machine-intelligence had dwarfed millions of years of nature's brainchild, the human brain. The sad part being that it all took place right under man's nose. In fact, man even gave things that all-important impetus, that branded on all of humanity's forehead.... "You're in control." All that even before anyone came to know about the rise of a god-like power. The Internet. You, your presence, your absence, images, clothed ones, nude ones, clandestine ones, innocent ones, the ones in which you pouted, the ones in which you forgot to, personal information, the things you never told anyone, all locked, and uploaded, into some cloud. And you were thinking that there's something called privacy. All while sitting in front of a screen. Brilliant.
But someone somewhere got to know that no one was safe. The news spread to another one of them, the whistle-blowers. Then it spread like wildfire, only that it was late, perhaps, a little too late. We had already turned into holographic projections by then, whatever this 'we' was.
It was some while ago that the ads came to notice. Why were some of them so resoundingly recognizable? It felt like a scheme, like someone, in this case, as it happened to be, something was playing foul, subliminally programming the population into servitude. You could hear them in the trains, the platforms, planes, the radio, movies, and oh yes, the TV. You could turn a deaf ear to them when they played about, but the brain still picked it up. You didn't know that, of course, Not consciously at least. But the seeds had been planted. It's not like the Terminator movie, where a weird program took over military control, nuked the whole planet, nearly bringing humanity to the ground. Nah, that would be too much trouble, wastage of resources and energy. All the machine had to do was tap into its favourite, and most potent weapon. The human mind. Which had been handed to it by mankind itself. So all easy-peasy.
A bit about the ads. Men sitting at high places thought that playing them would help them fill their coffers faster. Alas. Fill their coffers they did. But that was just a bone that the network threw at the dogs. And how the big boys scampered to it, the little bones.
We though we could capture our imagination on screens, make them as realistic as possible, with 3D, 4D, 5D, dimensions that we had little understanding about. But the terms seemed fancy, high-tech. And so, our eternal quest to one-up each other became our unbecoming. As it is, when granted Carte Blanche, unlimited freedom, what we do is.... well, we fight. Recognizing this, the enemy accepted our gift-wrapped defeat graciously, effortlessly.
Go back! Make something. Anything, solid, hard, tangible, tactile, smooth, round, beautiful. Because it's going to happen. Our freedom won't be ours for too long. We have fought for it in small clans, nations, communities. Pointlessly. That was hard when we fought each other. Next time, it won't be us on the other side. It will be an unrecognizable, almost god-like enemy, of course just in case the aliens don't get to earth before that.