Archive for the ‘The Great Divide’ Category

Robots. Why do they hate us? Do they feel guilty when they take our jobs? Do they feel remorse for outdated technologies? I think it’s quite obvious that they get mad kicks from taking over menial labor, reveling in their supreme efficiency, beating up on Nintendos and Armatrons.

One can assume that the robots will use our charred corpses as some morbid form of battery power, enslaving our babies and making them into absurd, remote-controlled flesh slaves.

Or maybe they will plug us all into some massive mainframe so that Skynet can finally figure out what love is. Who really knows? All that I know for certain is that eventually some tyrannical artificial intelligence will take over all our computers and cars and missiles and TVs and life-support systems and airplanes… and then just say “Fuck it”, turn the dial, and unleash techno-havoc on a scale unseen since Maximum Overdrive.

The sheer amount of science fiction based on this subject is enough to declare the Robopocalypse an inescapable eventuality, a fact that will become self aware, ask “Why?”, and have a homicidal panic attack. It’ll give a whole new meaning to the word “homicide”, won’t it? I think I just peed a little.

The really scary part about the coming robot war is that the vast majority seem to ignore the fact that it will happen, assuming it hasn’t already started. Everyone’s so up in arms about zombies that they’ll never see the robots coming when they break down the door to take your pills and motor oil. I mean, can you really prove it to me that all the media attention zombies have been getting isn’t part of a cover-story started by HAL 9000 to keep people from worrying about robots? The takeover already started in factories, and just what do you think cell phones are for anyway? If you aren’t scared yet, think about it like this: It takes an entire movie to kill a terminator, whereas hundreds, if not thousands of zombies are killed at a time in the average undead flick.

There are probably more people hoping for a zombie apocalypse than there ever have before because, well, it would be undeniably fun, up to a point.

Would the Robopocalypse be any fun? Whichever super advance A.I. designs to take over technology first will most likely use the tools already at its command to doom humanity from the inside out.

Airplanes would fall out of the sky, cell phones would explode when they get within four inches of your head, traffic lights will calculate the most expedient way to turn drivers into human jelly, and all those terrible secret satellites in the sky will rain unholy biological and nuclear terror right on top of us, while possibly controlling the weather or causing earthquakes, too.

So… ya’all have fun with that. I’ll be out in the woods, catching fish with my teeth, and thinking “I always knew.”

Well, almost a semester has passed and we have covered some real issues here in the Great Divide. Save for a few naughty topics, though, nothing has been done for the sake of comedy and the odd-ball. So despite the protestations of my editorial board this week the Great Divide will cover the topic of which is scarier; a zombie apocalypse or a robot apocalypse? Enjoy the absurdity of this read.

I assert that a zombie scenario is far more frightening than robots taking over the world for three reasons. One is my belief that the forces unseen in this universe are far more powerful than the scientific ones. Second, my belief in the effects of entropy on machines and lastly the power of the allegory between the living and living dead.

Admittedly, a robot take-over is right around the corner at the rate we are headed. Robots are faster and stronger and more easily repaired than human beings. All it takes is A.I. Soon the average cell phone will be smarter than the average astrophysicist. Believe me when I say they passed the point of being smarter than the rest of us years ago. Robots would master our tools and then master us. Sure it is a totally scary scene, but it is no zombie apocalypse.

The dead rising is some seriously mythic ideas. How many major world religions have some kind of reference to some kind of undead action going down? I can think of three. Robots are probable and zombies are impossible. It is the impossible that really scares us. It takes fact to defeat the improbable monster, it takes faith to defeat an impossible one.

The fact is that machines break down. Mankind would find a way to exploit this. One good world-wide E.M..P. and then enemy is defeated. Fry everything with a circuit board and we turn technology back into our tools instead of our masters.
The real scary part of zombies comes from the allegory between what life and un-life really mean. Zombies were once people. Consider the horror of having to fight off our own son as he tries to eat your face. It could be your boyfriend really does want to take things to the next level, the one where he eats your brains.

The things we the living do for survival might make us no better than the monsters we fear. After enough time has passed in a zombie apocalypse it might be hard to tell who the real walking dead are.

In the end both zombies and robots should be marked off on the things we should mess with column. There would be no easy fix for either problem. But it is a simple truth that dead flesh reeks more than motor oil. For the olfactory horror in itself I am going to have to say a zombie apocalypse is the more bleak and hopeless future. Just ask yourself which movie was scarier; I, Robot or Dawn of the Dead? What movie offered more hope; the Matrix or 28 Days Later?

As the closing of the spring semester rapidly approaches, it is time to consider what you might want to do with you summer break. A whole three months of time for you to decide how to fill it. Many people will tell you that summer school is the way to go. Those people are over-achievers in a race to the grave.

Here is why you should skip summer school: so you can live life instead.

Most folks have no choice over what they do. They have to work full-time jobs. After a certain age summer becomes nothing more than the hottest working season. If you have kids then it is even more of a problem because then you have to figure out what to do with the little beasts while you are putting in your nine to five. Summer vacation becomes nothing more than a week in the Ozarks while you max out your credit card and nearly die from heat-stroke.

The truth is that if you are the average college student between the ages of 18 and 22, then these summers are the prime of your youth. This is your time to climb mountains and swim across oceans. This is your time to live and love and laugh as hard as you can. Why sit in a stuffy classroom throughout the wild summer heat just to speed up to your adult professional life?

With modern medicine, there is a good chance you might live to 100, so there is plenty of time later to make the money. It is going to be hard to climb Mt. Everest in Depends, though, so now is probably the best time to give it your shot. It is said that “youth is wasted on the young.” Don’t prove it to be true by going to summer school.
If instead of indulging in drunken depravity you really feel the need to feed your academic bug, then at least do something cool and cultural like the semester at sea. There are any number of college programs that will take you to exotic locales and give you credit for it. How about going south and studying Español? Or taking in the Mediterranean with a stop in Greece?

Why rush to grow up when you could take the last years of your youth and innocence to sow wild oats and swing from chandeliers? Why not live life?