popular
Transformers
cartoons had never quite succeeded in grabbing my attention. Instead, my enjoyment of the Autobots and their exploits would come much later, only after seeing the more recent film renditions directed by Michael Bay. In the films, a remarkably dramatic representation of the classic Hasbro figures and their morphing abilities was afforded to us as viewers, woven around a storyline that cast Earth as the battleground for an ongoing struggle between two warring factions: Optimus Prime and his noble Autobot kindred, and the evil and destructive Decepticons.
Although the Transformers might best represent any young boy’s hope for gratuitous robotic violence and destruction at its finest, they also present us with a unique circumstance worthy of further consideration: Optimus Prime and his fellow Transformers aren’t biological life forms, but are instead intelligent, conscious entities thatare able to change their physical shape and structure at will because they are mechanized, artificial beings. In short, the Transformers represent
advanced artificial intelligence from another world.
The notion that human interaction with non-terrestrial intelligences that might be artificial by design, rather than biological in nature, presents a number of unique considerations, many of which we will explore in greater depth later in this book. For the time being, our allusion to
Transformers
serves as a unique springboard, propelling us further toward our foray into attempts at better understanding the ways humans might one day intermingle with varieties of intelligence that exceed our own. In truth, this sort of interaction may already be occurring, though without arming ourselves with the proper cultural and technological frames of reference needed to recognize them, we may not even be able to perceive such interactions at present. Think, for instance, of the anthill situated mere inches from the shoulder of a busy roadway. With every passing vehicle, the busy workers and drones must feel an Earth-shaking rumble within their subterranean community, as they perform diligently for their queen. Few, however, would ever stop to consider the cause of the great tremors that might occasionally shake dust from the ceilings of their tunnels and burrows. Arguably, the sudden realization that there were enormous, intelligent beings only a few feet away would become a horrifying prospect for the lowly worker ant.
Then again, if humans were ever to learn that there were enormous, intelligent beings only a few feet away from us, occasionally pondering our existence—or maybe even our apparent
insignificance
—wouldn’t we be equally terrified by this unusual prospect?
This sort of analogy has been utilized before by the likes of Michio Kaku and a number of others, with attempts at reconciling the notion that human perception, much like that of the ant, may be very limited at times. Though we can conceptualize the ideas surrounding intelligent life like ourselves existing elsewhere in the universe, many of us nonetheless ridicule and poke fun at the idea of alien visitation as described in gross detail by the purported alien abductee. One may find this truism particularly interesting to note, especially after a careful examination of the work that is best known among all the alien abductees, Whitley Strieber, who shows that his own views regarding interactions he had with so-called “visitors” had not entailed the perception that they were necessarily extraterrestrial at the outset. In fact, his earliest suppositions involved a very terrestrial scenario, where his captors could have emerged, albeit covertly, from someplace right here in our midst:
It could be that the “visitors” were really from here. Certainly the long tradition of fairy lore suggested that something had been with us for far more than the forty or fifty years since the phenomenon took on its present appearance. The only trouble with this theory was that
Transformers
cartoons had never quite succeeded in grabbing my attention. Instead, my enjoyment of the Autobots and their exploits would come much later, only after seeing the more recent film renditions directed by Michael Bay. In the films, a remarkably dramatic representation of the classic Hasbro figures and their morphing abilities was afforded to us as viewers, woven around a storyline that cast Earth as the battleground for an ongoing struggle between two warring factions: Optimus Prime and his noble Autobot kindred, and the evil and destructive Decepticons.
Although the Transformers might best represent any young boy’s hope for gratuitous robotic violence and destruction at its finest, they also present us with a unique circumstance worthy of further consideration: Optimus Prime and his fellow Transformers aren’t biological life forms, but are instead intelligent, conscious entities thatare able to change their physical shape and structure at will because they are mechanized, artificial beings. In short, the Transformers represent
advanced artificial intelligence from another world.
The notion that human interaction with non-terrestrial intelligences that might be artificial by design, rather than biological in nature, presents a number of unique considerations, many of which we will explore in greater depth later in this book. For the time being, our allusion to
Transformers
serves as a unique springboard, propelling us further toward our foray into attempts at better understanding the ways humans might one day intermingle with varieties of intelligence that exceed our own. In truth, this sort of interaction may already be occurring, though without arming ourselves with the proper cultural and technological frames of reference needed to recognize them, we may not even be able to perceive such interactions at present. Think, for instance, of the anthill situated mere inches from the shoulder of a busy roadway. With every passing vehicle, the busy workers and drones must feel an Earth-shaking rumble within their subterranean community, as they perform diligently for their queen. Few, however, would ever stop to consider the cause of the great tremors that might occasionally shake dust from the ceilings of their tunnels and burrows. Arguably, the sudden realization that there were enormous, intelligent beings only a few feet away would become a horrifying prospect for the lowly worker ant.
Then again, if humans were ever to learn that there were enormous, intelligent beings only a few feet away from us, occasionally pondering our existence—or maybe even our apparent
insignificance
—wouldn’t we be equally terrified by this unusual prospect?
This sort of analogy has been utilized before by the likes of Michio Kaku and a number of others, with attempts at reconciling the notion that human perception, much like that of the ant, may be very limited at times. Though we can conceptualize the ideas surrounding intelligent life like ourselves existing elsewhere in the universe, many of us nonetheless ridicule and poke fun at the idea of alien visitation as described in gross detail by the purported alien abductee. One may find this truism particularly interesting to note, especially after a careful examination of the work that is best known among all the alien abductees, Whitley Strieber, who shows that his own views regarding interactions he had with so-called “visitors” had not entailed the perception that they were necessarily extraterrestrial at the outset. In fact, his earliest suppositions involved a very terrestrial scenario, where his captors could have emerged, albeit covertly, from someplace right here in our midst:
It could be that the “visitors” were really from here. Certainly the long tradition of fairy lore suggested that something had been with us for far more than the forty or fifty years since the phenomenon took on its present appearance. The only trouble with this theory was that
Similar Books
