Nathan Key

What do Terminator and Matrix have in common with Hotel Rwanda? Namely, they all deal with power struggles. OK, it may seem rather strange that I’m drawing a correlation between these films, but bear with me for a moment while I explain my position. It seems to me that most conflicts eventually rest on one of the following two areas: Values and Resources

Value conflicts are wars and battles that spring from a clash of ethnic, ethic, or moral disagreement. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong about an individual defining themselves by their nationality, religion, or ethics, once they take a stand on these things it inevitably causes small conflicts. Even at the most basic level, when one assesses themselves by a certain criteria; he tends to assess other people by these criteria as well. So if I’m proud of my American, Christian, and Pacifist ways I may hold myself in an elevated position over someone who doesn’t share the same beliefs. Even subtle criticism like this lead to bigger conflicts as I interact with those I disagree with. The outworking of my own pride can eventually become war if it’s not tended well.

Watch the Terminator series with this sort of idea in the back of your mind, and you’ll see the direct correlation between Skynet’s decision to wipe out humanity with this value conflict. The self-aware AI, of course, makes the jump from criticism to war much faster than humans would, but the principle seen in the film is very similar to what we can read into historical events like the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Hotel Rwanda.

Each of these are value-based conflicts where the self-proclaimed superior/powerful group does its best to eliminate or convert those who don’t meet their standard.

Resource conflicts are any kind of disagreement or battle that deals with scarcity. When resources are unlimited and there is plenty of land, food, etc to go around for everyone, competition isn’t nearly as fierce and normally doesn’t result in war or death. But as soon as there are limits in place, humans always try to get as much as they can- even at the cost of others.

When we watch ads from two politicians, trading jabs, it’s basically the same thing. There can only be one President of the United States and so anyone running who wants to win will do whatever they can to grab the most votes. Votes are the limited resource.

I used to work for Universal Orlando Resort where our theme parks were continually “at war” with Disney for market share. We wanted as many tourists as possible to visit our park- rather than Disney. Time was the resources we were fighting over.

If you read into the history of Matrix movies, they basically boil down to a war based on resource problems. Robots need power and after humans nuke the sky- crippling the machines’ ability to gather solar power- their only source of fuel is the humans themselves. Humans are only enslaved because the robots want to continue functioning.

So as we watch movies like Terminator, Matrix, and Hotel Rwanda, I think it’s important to get to the bottom of conflict if we really want to avoid the violence depicted within each film. The bottom line is, we still need to answer these questions if we’re going to do anything about wars and interpersonal conflicts:

What can we do to lessen the value and resource conflicts before they grow out of control and threaten our very lives?

The other day I came home and found that the internet wasn’t working. I didn’t have anything particular that I needed to do- I think I was going to check my e-mail- but I got really nervous for a moment, wondering what I was missing because my link to the world was cut off.

It was strange, though, because for a moment after my initial panic I actually felt a sense of relief. I actually felt free. There was a sudden freedom from any obligation to respond to e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, and RSS feeds from GoogleReader. The internet was down and so I had a legitimate excuse to be disconnected from the world and solely focused on my family. The truth is, it’s shocking that I felt this way because only a few months ago I would have been going crazy trying to figure out how to get my connection back.

Remember that scene in Matrix where Joe Pantoliano’s character Cypher begs a Sentinel to allow him back into the Matrix? I didn’t make the correlation until now, but I’m beginning to think that his need for the Matrix is similar to our need for the internet and social networking.

Can you imagine life without our current range of technologies? Could we even go back to the way it was before personal computers, cell phones, Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook inundated our culture?

I’m hard pressed to admit it, but I think we’re already enslaved to technology. Most of us couldn’t figure out a way to grow our own food, weave our own clothes, or find water that’s safe to drink. Whether or not our own technology turns on us, I think it’s pretty safe to say that any sort of major interruption would be more than most of us could handle.

I think that’s why New Orleans eroded so quickly into madness after Hurricane Katrina.

Without our technology, we’re helpless.

So, I don’t believe that AI will kill us.
I think it’s much more likely that we’ll kill ourselves off in the wake of a major power failure.

But that’s some of the beauty of these AI Monster Movies. They may not paint an accurate picture of what the world will really be like if the robots take over, but they paint a very clear symbol of the slavery that we’ve created for ourselves. As I mentioned in the first post, it’s all very much like the Tower of Babel- we’ve placed our hope in technology rather than in God and in our fellow man.

And as a result, we’re confused. We don’t understand each other any longer. We only understand our own needs and our own beliefs.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The other day, I was unplugged and rather than spending the evening worrying about whether or not the internet would come back on, I played with my son and I spoke with my wife. I’ve been doing that a lot more lately. In fact, last night I didn’t even look at my computer for more than a few seconds.

I spent the evening with them, instead. And I’m going to be really honest…
It was much better than the Matrix.

I love Robots and so I'm pleased to announce that Robots are the topic for this week.

Background. I watched Terminator: Salvation on Saturday with my good friend Seth and it got me thinking about AI and robots and whether or not what’s presented in Terminator, Matrix, and a number of other ‘Robots as Frankenstein’s Monster’ movies could actually happen. As it stands, I’m not really sure- but in an effort to fully explore the possibilities, I want to break this week into four different parts so that we can discuss the topic fluidly.

1. Today will be an introduction with some questions to get your reaction.
2. Wednesday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether AI can actually become self-aware and what it means to be human.
3. Thursday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether or not technology needs to begin killing us off with guns before we decide that it’s enslaved us.
4. Friday will be a political discussion about whether or not governments have the right to target ethnic groups through profiling (and even genocide?).

I can’t do an exhaustive study on robots because there are literally too many religious, philosophical, and political issues at steak in movies like these in order to sum them up in a few days. But I’m pretty sure that in one sense, all of these stories are a reiteration of the Tower of Babel- they’re all about what happens when humans place their faith, hope, and love into technology rather than on God (or even their fellow man).

You might want to read up on the Tower here and here if you’re not familiar with it. In preparation for this week, you may also want to read up on Asimov’s theories about what humans would/should do to prevent a Frankenstein’s Monster occurrence.

Questions to consider today and this week:

   Do you think AI (artificial intelligence) will ever become self-aware?
   Could we already be enslaved to technology/robots?
   Why (in fiction at least) do the things we create always rise up against us?
   Do the oppressed have the right to overthrow their oppressors?

I don't really think that humans were created to endure alarm clocks.

When we lived in Seattle I had the wonderful opportunity to work for a company who didn't really care that I was "in the office" at exactly 8:30. They were more concerned with whether or not I was coming up with good ideas within my deadlines. So since I didn't have a bus to catch or the requirement to be at work at a certain time each day, I got into the wonderful habit of sleeping until I woke up rather than according to the alarm clock.

Something amazing happened.

I found out that I usually woke up within 15 to 20 minutes of the same time each day so long as I went to bed around the same time each night. The difference was, sleeping until I needed to wake up rather than being awakened felt more natural.

I felt more rested.

I was on my game.

All this changed again when I began working at Advantor last month.

I didn't want to begin my career by coming in later than the official 8:30am office opening and so I began setting my alarm clock to make sure that I was getting up on time. And even though I began going to bed at a reasonable time, I found that I was much more tired and exhausted because of the artificial wake-up time.

I'm not entirely sure what to do to thwart this, because I obviously can't risk going into work habitually late... but I'd like to go back to my body's needs rather than something external. I just don't know that my new boss is going to be happy if I come in late every once in a while because I'm trying to "go natural."

Anyone have ideas on how we can meet the standards of Western Work Schedules and also trust our own internal clock rather than technology to wake us up?

I'm happy to announce that after a week and a half of interviewing and creating e-learning programs I'm back to blogging again!

Thanks for keeping with me through this short hiatus.

***

I had an embarrassing thing happen to me last night.

I shot and edited a short video tour of our new apartment, uploaded it to Youtube.com, and then linked to it through tinyurl.com on Twitter and Facebook (which I typically do with my blog postings, too). Now generally, I check the tiny link before posting it by clicking it to make sure that it directs to the page I want, but last night I was in a hurry and so I simply copied it into the Be Twittered Box on my homepage. A few minutes later, when I realized that I hadn't checked the link,  I clicked on my update status and a pornographic picture popped up instead of my video.

You can imagine the terror I felt.

Twitter and Facebook are both very public forums and I had to work quickly to deleted all signs of the tinyurl I had created, all the while hoping and praying that no one else clicked on it and was directed to the same image that I had seen. An image like that can ruin a person, even if it's accidental.

So what happened?

Obviously, I'm not one to post pornography. My Youtube video link was correct when I entered it into tinyurl. All I did was copy/paste the link that tinyurl provided into Be Twittered. So how did the signals get crossed? How did pornography end up on my status update instead of the Youtube Video I intended?

Or perhaps a better question is this: Who is to blame?
As far as I'm concerned, there are really only three potential villains in this example. The first is TINYURL. Through some glitch in their system, a link they generated pointed toward content that I hadn't asked for or created. Their service promises a shortened link to the content the user intends and by providing me with a link to something other than what I  asked for, they messed up. They broke my trust- especially since the link directed users toward something offensive, rather than simply a different video or website.

The second villain is the person who posted the pornography in the first place. Tinyurl would not have been able to direct me to that picture unless that picture was online with an accessible web address. Online pornography is a blight to the internet and should never be readily available to accidentally stumble upon. Anyone who posts pornography is already a bad guy in my book, but at the very least this person should have protected their content so that only those who were specifically looking for pornography could access it. Anything less is practically criminal as far as I'm concerned.

But the third villain is me. As a content creator and distributor, it's ultimately my responsibility to check links and content for accuracy before I post them. There are hundreds of people who have clicked on my tinyurls in the past. That means that there are hundreds of victims out there who could have clicked on my status link and viewed something different than what they expected. No one should be mislead into viewing offensive material. Especially not when they are clicking on something I've posted.

** With this in mind I'd like to publicly apologize if anyone did click on the link in question. It was completely inappropriate content and I am deeply sorry if you were mislead and viewed it. **

So, for those who distribute content, let this be a lesson to you.
In order to avoid the pitfalls of bad links-

1. Always double check embedded content and links before posting.
2. Always click through a post soon after publishing just to make sure.
3. Don't brush off responsibility if you create a bad link. Apologize.

These sorts of problems don't happen very often, but when they do it's the responsibility of the distributor (in this case, me). Whoever "handled" the information last must ensure that readers aren't getting bad content. I didn't do that.

So who's to blame?
Me. I'm to blame.

Memory: It's 1980-something and I'm looking through some floppy disks for our Commodore 64. I find one labeled BBS and figure that it's some sort of game- what else is the C64 for? After a half hour of trouble shooting, I've got phone lines connected to our modem and I'm online, only to find out that BBS stands for Boring-Boring-Stupid. I suddenly regret my stubborn curiosity because I now only have 15 minutes of "computer time" left, most of which I spend loading up The Nodes of Yesod.

***

Memory: It's 1991 and I'm over at my friend Tim's house. We play Sim City for a while before he decides to show me this new thing they've got. He loads up CompuServe and we browse around for a few minutes before I tell him that I'd rather get back to building our city.

***

Memory: It's 1995 and my family installs America Online for the first time on our home computer. By this time, I'm in high school and although I'm still interested in video games I'm also very interested in this new form of technology that's beginning to permeate past Compute Magazine and into the mainstream.

***

Memory: It's 1999 and I'm back home from college. My parents are talking about ditching AOL and I'm glad. Other Internet Service Providers have taken its place and now AOL seems somewhat confining since the service wants to control every aspect of my online interactions. I've been away at college using an "ISP only" to explore world wide web. I'm now used to "surfing the net" and getting lost in different pages. AOL wants to bring it all to me, and I'd rather go out there and get it.

***

Memory: It's 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. I'm creating a presence on livejournal, myspace, facebook, youtube, and wikipedia. I'm also visiting the pages for about 10-15 webcomics, news sources, and blogs that I enjoy reading. I'm surfing the net less and less because I'm finding things I like and don't have time to go looking for other things.

***

Memory: It's mid-late 2008 and I'm loading a bunch of applications into my iGoogle homepage. Most of them are designed to bring content from all over the internet directly to me in one place so that I don't have to go to multiple sites a day just to get it. My spirit of exploration and adventure is still there, but it's nice that I don't have to spend so much time blazing through trash just to find things I enjoy.

***

Now: I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the time I said hello to AOL and the time I streamlined content into my iGoogle page I followed the philosophy behind the Paradox of Choice.

Basically, it boils down to this- choice is a good thing, but too much choice is stagnating.

Too many options paralyzes us and forces us into this place where we can't really do much because we're too busy trying to figure out what we'd like to do. The unlimited world of the web was great for a while- surfing the net was filled with potential and excitement. There were places to explore and new things to see. But, eventually it simply became too much. It was too time consuming and there was too much information.

What Google and other sites that are allowing modifiable content are offering is the chance to customize a limited experience on the web that's filled with options- just not so many options that we're overwhelmed by the experience.

I like that.

I like the less is more philosophy behind the Paradox of Choice and I like that Google is smart enough to allow me limited interactions on the web, but ones that I can optimize and control- unlike AOL who always wanted to force certain things into my online experience and didn't allow the user to define the experience.

And how's this for irony- from what I remember of that BBS program, it looked an awful lot like my current iGoogle homepage. It just took 20 years for me to appreciate it.