thetinz

Human being... during the first few millennium of our existence that didn't have too much meaning. One was either tribe or not. As we developed language and agriculture the distinction became whether one grew what you grew. Skipping ahead, ships now exist and for the first time national identity becomes a major factor in self image. One was either Greek, or Phoenician, or a stranger. Jumping ahead to the 20th century, you were classified more by the color of your skin and the means by which you speak to God rather than your country of origin. You were a white man, or a Jew, or a "Nigger." Sadly this continued far too long for anyone's liking. With exception of the bigots, but I'll ignore them for the sake of my point, which I promise I'm getting to soon. Let's jump forward to 1937. the first digital computer comes into existence as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. This grandfather to all things digital took up an entire building and had less computer power than a common digital watch of today. That was just the beginning. For less than a century later we have computers that are treated more like family members than any piece of technology in history ever has. Would you cry if your blender or microwave died? No; you might swear a bit and then toss it into the bin, head out and buy a new one.


Now imagine that your computer has just kicked the bucket. Studies have shown that people experience the same grief if their computer dies as if a family member had done so. Anxiety, fear, anger, depression... These are reactions throughout history that have been reserved for great personal tragedy, but now can be felt about an inanimate hunk of plastic and silicon. When computers have been elevated to be worthy of emotion, what does it mean to be human? Let's flash back to the early nineties to a television show called Star Trek: The Next Generation. They had an entire species which were cybernetic human hybrids, they had a blind man who was able to see, in a manner, with the help of a visor... They even had an artificial intelligence life form. Such fantasy, such fiction. It was so futuristic to think that you could scan someone with a handheld device and tell you everything about their physiology. And now let's look at the parallels between the 24th Century and Now. People for whom hearing was a distance dream can now achieve it through the use of Cochlear Implants. And the technology that allows people to impact a device that could help them see is already in development. And it was once stated that we would only be able to develop an artificial intelligence once computers surpassed the phenomenal speed of 60 bits per second... Well, there are super-computers that have surpassed the tera-byte processing speeds, so the idea of artificial intelligence is not too far off.