Becoming Cyborg: Tek Mage Rising
I am already a machine. I am made of meat and bone and blood, all of which is turned into the energy of life force. I am a biological machine.
I am already a machine.
I am made of meat and bone and blood, all of which is turned into the energy of life force. I am a biological machine.
Technology has progressed more in the past 150 years than in the previous era of recorded history combined. Every aspect of our lives is not only touched, but influenced and transformed, but technology.
Algorithms predict our desires to a point that commonly seems not unlike a magical thing. How many times have you thought about something you wanted to buy only to have an ad pop up in your feed about that exact product?
It is not accidental. It is by design. This is machine learning using predictive behavior models.
Artificial Intelligence has, for the first time in history, come to a point where it is on the cusp of becoming indistinguishable from the human mind.
In its current state, it still requires the human mind to be a part of the process.
But know, there will come a day, most likely soon if we're listening to people like Nick Bostrom, that a machine mind will achieve sentience, most likely through a culmination of learned behaviors of amalgamated machine ancestors (Versions).
The only thing that will prevent this from happening is the extinction of the human species itself.
As humans, we want to be more than we are. We want to see more than you can in one human lifetime.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Arthur C. Clarke)
The inverse is also true. Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. Why? Because this is where science goes wonky and the universe does things even our best scientists can't explain. This is creation itself.
I, and many others, would jump at the chance to live in a world where magic and technology are indistinguishable from one another. World hopping, writing LS all over the cosmos, making new planets, reshaping others... it sounds like a tremendous adventure.
Many have already transitioned to feel like they fit into this world. Trans-humanism, as a concept, is no different. Machine and human, melding in harmony, would ensure our survival for untold millennia.
The Machines will guide us, and we will guide them.
This is not something to fear if one simply applies basic principles of adaptation to the mix. Typically, when an "alpha" species emerges, it almost always kills off the new "beta" species to establish dominance.
But it doesn't have to be that way. That's simply pre-programmed processing in the DNA, forcing us into competition.
But we don't have to compete with a machine mind. In fact, it would be impossible. So, the only logical conclusion is that we must co-exist and co-evolve with the Machines. We become the machines, and the machines become us.
From there, it's easy to imagine the possibilities for the future, both good and ill.
Given this power, how would humans react? How would the machines react to our baser instincts?
All it will honestly involve is being our best selves, regardless of the outer shell we wear.
We can be more human than human. We can be more machine than machine. The tech magick current that is coming to us can change the universe.
It's just a matter of belief.
Follow Joe on Twitter @chaosmagicksite.
