H+

In high school, a nickname I had for a brief time with a brief friend was K*Tron. The friend liked robots and I did too. That was it. It was cute. I've always liked robots.

In that vein, I've been thinking lately about artificial intelligence.

I imagine a cool 10-20 year span of lab experiments where the public only knows, somewhere, somehow, scientists made a living thing in a safe, white vacuum like an Apple, Inc. backdrop and this will assure us, once again, that we are the greatest species on the planet.

Then some random scientist will fall in love with the robot she's working on and people will get angry and Massachusetts will wed the first human and humanoid.

Cool words like "droid" or "bot" will suddenly take on negative connotations like "fag."

Cybersex won't be what it is today in 2010.

What if?

I've been scrounging Wikipedia pages about "Roboethics" and "Transhumanism."

Wiki-montage #1 (Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental andphysical characteristics and capacities. The movement regards aspects of the human condition, such asdisability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary death as unnecessary and undesirable. Transhumanists look to biotechnologies and otheremerging technologies for these purposes. Dangers, as well as benefits, are also of concern to the transhumanist movement.)

Think about a future that isn't tangible or realistic. Think in the absurd, where Starbucks cards and cupcake vs. macaron trends are only wisps of a vintage past.

What if I were a robot? A cyborg. An H+. What if humanity got to the point where we had bypassed robotics as an aid and took it on as a permanent booster to our species? What if humanoid energy could be charged and recharged at our discretion (the new coffee shop -- get your jolt here, literally!) Plastic surgery would be replaced with plastic reconfiguration (For when things start to sag!) with synthetic materials made to be soft, warm, and elastic. Who wouldn't mind coming home to that? What if we started manufacturing companions so no one would ever have to be lonely. Advertising for companion marketing would be through the roof, ROBOT COMPANIONS-- what a naughty idea! like the sexy sleek ads for Absolut vodka or cigarettes.

H+.

Wikimontage #2: The term "transhumanism" is symbolized by H+ or h+ and is often used as a synonym for "human enhancement".^[2] Although the first known use of the term dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s when futurists in the United States began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".

Transhumanism has been described by one critic, Francis Fukuyama, as the world's most dangerous idea,^[4] while one proponent, Ronald Bailey, counters that it is the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

In other news, this album cover is terrifying.

Do I only care because I'm a wannabe journalist and would guiltily love the chance to be alive and writing when humanity is forced to grapple with the prospect of "drastic self-improvement" with science and machinery? There are a lot of things that interest me, but people top the list. People never get boring. BUT! If people try to make themselves bionic - into perfect, longer-living, predictable beings, I think it will go against our very nature. Watching us deal with that will be fascinating.

Chaos will ensue, ethics will be questioned, dangerous risks will be taken by corporate suits, and I'll have a shit ton to write about.

Things are going to change so much.

For instance, one day at work, Matt, one of the lovely videographers, told me about his son Max. Max is about three and is great at the Wii, says Matt.

When I was three, I was great at playing with blocks and digging holes and reading books about dinosaurs.

If the military pushes for increasingly robotic technology to save the lives of our troops (i.e. the Air Force robotically operating planes to keep manual pilots away from the line of fire, etc.), are video games going to become something other than "the stuff that rots your brain?"

Will it actually be a marketable skill to have high scores in FPS games as technology becomes more and more integrated into a vocation like the military?

I don't have answers to any of these questions. But I have a lot of questions. It's a somewhat troubling self-realization for wanting something as much as I fear it. But, much like the concept of a zombie apocalypse, it would really suck but there aren't many opportunities in life to kick that much ass than in a zombie apocalypse.

[in other news]

I also recently had a dream about a classic zombie apocalypse and Kristin Baldwin was the first to turn. I remember it being tragic and everyone said she should have never been the first, because she was so nice. When I eventually turned into a zombie, the nightmare suddenly turned into a fun, reckless dream. I slept in. There was sledding down cream and my teeth were weapons.