I have not watched too terribly much of the Olympics thus far. For some reason, this year, it just doesn’t seem to interest me. But last evening, I tuned in for a half an hour or so. They were doing mostly fluff pieces during the segment, and not airing any real sporting events.
The first bit, was on the advanced technology of the South Koreans. It showed clip after clip of all the various robots which were carrying out many human-like tasks and undertakings.
In fact, in South Korea, they already have those robot crews cleaning the airports, teaching English, and working assembly lines. Seriously. They are everywhere over there.
And now that the Olympics have cropped up in their neck of the woods, they are demonstrating their robotic lumberjack muscle. SK will be using 85 robots at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Those robots will assist athletes, clean venues, provide translations, and even ski. I guess for the South Korean Team. And! I had missed all the fanfare about the robot carrying the torch. Holy Nuts and Bolts Batman.
So later last night, after my fill of “Olympic” stories, I picked up a copy of The Week and perused the front page headlines. The one that jumped out? “We are one step closer to human cloning”. It showed a couple of little monkeys, head to head. Monkey One and Monkey Two. Yes in China, they have made the next step in the progression of cloning humans. In fact, they said it is now quite possible, but they have no plans of doing so. Holy I-See-Me Batman!
This is not to mention the story which came out several months ago about scientists who had unearthed the DNA of Dinosaurs, and Wooly Mammoths, and such. The cited the possibilities of cloning those creatures too.
Human Cloning.
Robots.
Jurrassic Park.
I swear I should have followed my initial life-path as a scientist. If I were the Chemist today, that I had hoped to be as a child, then I would waltz into those laboratories, and grab the shoulders of these people, and shake the holy sh!t out of them.
I know I have mentioned this before. BUT. This is getting serious. They have infultrated the Olympics, for crying out loud.
Have they NOT seen the movies, people? Everyone else in the world has seen the movies. Cloning is always bad. We never get it quite right, and the human clones ALWAYS revolt. Robots and Artificial Intelligence is never good. We get it wrong, and the Robots start outthinking us, eventually turning against all humans in the most cruel and unthinkable ways. They laugh at us with their monotone voices. Ha. Ha. And the Dinos in the Park. Of course, we mixed up the test tubes there too. And now the huge reptiles are stomping us, chewing us, and pitching us about like little rag dolls.
Albert Einstein had it quite right. “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Or perhaps we should listen to Robert A. Heinlein. “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love science and all the advancements of its potential. But how does that old saying go? In that big classroom of earth? “We are only as fast as the slowest person in class.”
Somebody is going to leave a screw loose, or drop a test tube. Trust me. I’ve seen all the episodes of Gilligan’s Island.
My advice? Be human today. It is the only choice we’ve got.
For now.
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“This inhuman place makes human monsters.”
― Stephen King, The Shining
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“Sometimes the things in our heads are far worse than anything they could put in books or on film!!”
― C.K. Webb
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“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
― Margaret Mitchell
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