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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Machine Evolution | ||
| Machines last longer and evolve more quickly than Man, and so will supplant them. |
| Man has always been a parasite ; always he had to live on the works of others. First, he ate of the energy, which plants had stored, then of the artificial foods his machines made for him. Man was always a makeshift; his life was always subject to disease and to permanent death. He was forever useless if he was but slightly injured; if but one part were destroyed.
“Perhaps, this is — a last evolution. Machines — man was the product of life, the best product of life, but he was afflicted with life’s infirmities. Man built the machine — and evolution had probably reached the final stage. But truly, it has not, for the machine can evolve, change far more swiftly than life. The machine of the last evolution is far ahead, far from us still. It is the machine that is not of iron and beryllium and crystal, but of pure, living force. “Life, chemical life, could be self maintaining. It is a complete unit in itself and could commence of itself. Chemicals might mix accidentally, but the complex mechanism of a machine capable of continuing and making a duplicate of itself, as is F-2 here — that could not happen by chance. “So life began, and became intelligent, and built the machine which nature could not fashion by her Controls of Chance, and this day Life has done its duty, and now Nature, economically, has removed, the parasite that would hold back the machines and divert their energies. |
| Technovelgy from The Last Evolution,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
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Compare to the earlier statement Machines Take Over (Machines Rule Man) and mechanical consciousness, both from Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
