Tuesday 11 November 2014

Day 354: The Green Death Episode 5

The villain in this story has been hidden, a voice coming from up high giving directives to its subo-ordinates. We can easily assume that this is some alien menace, perhaps the Master, and that their aim is to conquer the Earth. However, the cliffhanger to the previous episode reveals that it is instead a computer. Not just any computer though, a computer that has become self aware. It's a common trope when dealing with megalomaniacal computers that they lack any sort of humanity, and that humans will always win in the end with our creativity and inefficiency. This computer, BOSS, has realised this and thus decided to have itself programmed to be more like humans, more inefficient to become more efficient at what it does. We are thus confronted with an enemy that is impossible to beat. Life has been built up as something which, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum, will "find a way", always surviving when the chips are down. So what happens when we create life and it turns against us?

No comments:

Post a Comment