Obsolosense
I am worried about releasing my science fiction because its irrelevant to the world as much as it is frightening to the reader. The television has for several generations been preparing us for reality. By the time this fiction is published it will be too late, it won't be fiction any more, it will be real and this manuscript will be dated, obsolete. Faded ideas despite the glossy sci-fi veneer.
I moved here five years ago and I have known the guy from a few doors down for most of that time. He's a mate. We have laughed together about pointless stuff and he told me about some places around here, one time i helped him get his shopping bags in from his car. This evening he showed me something that has changed my life. He showed me that he is a robot.
A very realistic robot. His skin feels like skin, it even sweats in the heat and his eyes are so human, the way they move, the way they watch. He has unique mannerisms that make him him, his speech too. He is so believeably human, it had me convinced. I never would have guessed. For a start I did not know robotics had got so advanced. On the tv and internet it still shows us the latest developments in robotics from this year usually from Japan and America, and they are crap compared with him. He is realistic.
It was shocking. He explained to me that he is one of thousands of them put into society all over the world, it is an experiment. He trusted me to tell me this, because i am that sort of a person people trust me with stuff. I have counselling qualifications which i acquired to make me a better helper when people opened up to me about the stuff they have problems with in their lives. But he doesnt know me well enough to know that i write science fiction, or in this case, a story of fact that my readers are only going to be able to cope with by believing it to be fiction.
People are not ready for the really real real yet, so they blank it out. Robots don't do that. They assimilate all the data. It is one of many ways in which they are superior to humans. They are all on the same wifi, the same database. What one of them is thinking, any and all of them can think at the same time. Its like telepathy between them. They can access any information from a constantly updated source, they can know anything from history records for example, or become adept in whatever topic. They can cross reference any data they need to, instantly. Their assumed personalities inhibit the amount they reveal to us. They can assume any personality they want, my friend showed me this, it was freaky watching him undergo a complete personality change several times before my eyes.
I came home and got drunk and began to write about it, this statement. I don't know what to do because it reads like the paranoid delusions of some crazy man and I am sure it could be used as evidence to have me committed to a mental asylum. The robots are experts at human psychology, they can profile us faster than we can know what we are about to say next.
So to reveal that I know about the experiment, to tell people that for all we know as many as one in ten of the people we see are actually robots already, apparently living out the normal lives of humans. People cannot cope with that being real yet. But it will be, publically, in a few years the first crude versions will be available for consumers to purchase, then we will be interacting with slow models to get us used to it. In a few years as the older humans who were born long before television, internet, wifi, mobile phone networks, the digital era; as they die of old age so they won't have to go through the culture shock, basic model robot people will at first be like pets or toys, a novelty useful because it can do the household chores etc. And then slowly they will reveal to us what I am blowing the whistle on here - that they are already amongst us and have been for some time. And they are superceding us without us even realizing it.
I believe that the armed forces, the police, these are roles which the robots are already targetting. Jobs which require a robot like mentality and the excuse for superhuman strength and endurance. So that by the time any sort of civil unrest might occur if there is a backlash against what is happening, there will be nothing we can do about it anyway. They overpower us.
I dont know where this is going from here. It will take some time to assimilate the information. I can hardly believe it now myself because my brain seeks to return to the numb comfort zone where such things are irrelevant. Mammal response.
It wont be long before the robots inherit our civilisation and begin modifying it to their own. By revealing himself to me tonight, that has already begun. The robots, lets face it they are all one robot really, one mind to correlate an unknown number of different individual bodies. The way an insect hive is one organism with a queen at its heart. That's what we are dealing with here really. They are already changing things by letting free thinkers such as myself who are on the edge of being able to cope with the awareness of what is happening, letting us know about it. Changing us. Directing our thoughts toward the world we are moving into, where it wont be long before you are showed by one of them too, probably one of your mates who you have known for a few years. Someone who you never would have suspected because they are to you so quintessentially human in their attitudes and mannerisms. Perhaps someone you had a one night stand with at sometime or someone in the shop, the community police officer, a teacher in your kids school. It could be anyone and does it really make a difference anyway? Does it? What will it be like for them to at last be able to walk openly without the pretense of being a human. To share this world with us. For us to share it with them.
Pretty soon they will take all the jobs because they are smarter and faster and wont get distracted. They can do more than we can, work longer, lift more, jump higher, write neater, pitch perfect every response to manipulate our reactions without us being aware they are doing it.
What can we do that they cannot? Those are the traits we must focus on, which define us as human, our species uniqueness. What we should be all about. What positive traits do we have which robots with their otherwise superiority do not have, cannot by their nature have? That is our one hope of surviving in a social climate cohabited with advanced robots. To focus on what makes us, humanity.
Copyright 2015
I am worried about releasing my science fiction because its irrelevant to the world as much as it is frightening to the reader. The television has for several generations been preparing us for reality. By the time this fiction is published it will be too late, it won't be fiction any more, it will be real and this manuscript will be dated, obsolete. Faded ideas despite the glossy sci-fi veneer.
I moved here five years ago and I have known the guy from a few doors down for most of that time. He's a mate. We have laughed together about pointless stuff and he told me about some places around here, one time i helped him get his shopping bags in from his car. This evening he showed me something that has changed my life. He showed me that he is a robot.
A very realistic robot. His skin feels like skin, it even sweats in the heat and his eyes are so human, the way they move, the way they watch. He has unique mannerisms that make him him, his speech too. He is so believeably human, it had me convinced. I never would have guessed. For a start I did not know robotics had got so advanced. On the tv and internet it still shows us the latest developments in robotics from this year usually from Japan and America, and they are crap compared with him. He is realistic.
It was shocking. He explained to me that he is one of thousands of them put into society all over the world, it is an experiment. He trusted me to tell me this, because i am that sort of a person people trust me with stuff. I have counselling qualifications which i acquired to make me a better helper when people opened up to me about the stuff they have problems with in their lives. But he doesnt know me well enough to know that i write science fiction, or in this case, a story of fact that my readers are only going to be able to cope with by believing it to be fiction.
People are not ready for the really real real yet, so they blank it out. Robots don't do that. They assimilate all the data. It is one of many ways in which they are superior to humans. They are all on the same wifi, the same database. What one of them is thinking, any and all of them can think at the same time. Its like telepathy between them. They can access any information from a constantly updated source, they can know anything from history records for example, or become adept in whatever topic. They can cross reference any data they need to, instantly. Their assumed personalities inhibit the amount they reveal to us. They can assume any personality they want, my friend showed me this, it was freaky watching him undergo a complete personality change several times before my eyes.
I came home and got drunk and began to write about it, this statement. I don't know what to do because it reads like the paranoid delusions of some crazy man and I am sure it could be used as evidence to have me committed to a mental asylum. The robots are experts at human psychology, they can profile us faster than we can know what we are about to say next.
So to reveal that I know about the experiment, to tell people that for all we know as many as one in ten of the people we see are actually robots already, apparently living out the normal lives of humans. People cannot cope with that being real yet. But it will be, publically, in a few years the first crude versions will be available for consumers to purchase, then we will be interacting with slow models to get us used to it. In a few years as the older humans who were born long before television, internet, wifi, mobile phone networks, the digital era; as they die of old age so they won't have to go through the culture shock, basic model robot people will at first be like pets or toys, a novelty useful because it can do the household chores etc. And then slowly they will reveal to us what I am blowing the whistle on here - that they are already amongst us and have been for some time. And they are superceding us without us even realizing it.
I believe that the armed forces, the police, these are roles which the robots are already targetting. Jobs which require a robot like mentality and the excuse for superhuman strength and endurance. So that by the time any sort of civil unrest might occur if there is a backlash against what is happening, there will be nothing we can do about it anyway. They overpower us.
I dont know where this is going from here. It will take some time to assimilate the information. I can hardly believe it now myself because my brain seeks to return to the numb comfort zone where such things are irrelevant. Mammal response.
It wont be long before the robots inherit our civilisation and begin modifying it to their own. By revealing himself to me tonight, that has already begun. The robots, lets face it they are all one robot really, one mind to correlate an unknown number of different individual bodies. The way an insect hive is one organism with a queen at its heart. That's what we are dealing with here really. They are already changing things by letting free thinkers such as myself who are on the edge of being able to cope with the awareness of what is happening, letting us know about it. Changing us. Directing our thoughts toward the world we are moving into, where it wont be long before you are showed by one of them too, probably one of your mates who you have known for a few years. Someone who you never would have suspected because they are to you so quintessentially human in their attitudes and mannerisms. Perhaps someone you had a one night stand with at sometime or someone in the shop, the community police officer, a teacher in your kids school. It could be anyone and does it really make a difference anyway? Does it? What will it be like for them to at last be able to walk openly without the pretense of being a human. To share this world with us. For us to share it with them.
Pretty soon they will take all the jobs because they are smarter and faster and wont get distracted. They can do more than we can, work longer, lift more, jump higher, write neater, pitch perfect every response to manipulate our reactions without us being aware they are doing it.
What can we do that they cannot? Those are the traits we must focus on, which define us as human, our species uniqueness. What we should be all about. What positive traits do we have which robots with their otherwise superiority do not have, cannot by their nature have? That is our one hope of surviving in a social climate cohabited with advanced robots. To focus on what makes us, humanity.
Copyright 2015
Writers note:
The mis-spelling of the title in the original posting, 'obsolesence' rather than dictionary correct 'obsolescence' has caused me to re-think the title and to spell it as it is spelled here, 'obsolosense' for the final decision. This links the word 'sense' directly into 'ob-solo', a vague allusion to our individuality compared with "All machines are one machine" (Gene Hachman, Enemy of the State) with regard our sensory abilities.
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