The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_
A wheel was the preeminent invention. It said,
“Let there be axial motion.”
Birds and catfish cannot do this. Claiming a patent, had one been possible, couldn't be considered. More subtle would be tolerating claims for full credit, thus easing the human mind from suspicion of a ruse. Anyone verging on such a realization would be amusing, at best. The truth, in any case, is unrecoverable. Let the story remain, humans make inventions.
At odds with the story are physicists and mathematicians who describe a process of spontaneous intuition for which they can take no personal credit, afterward going on to invent machines. It is a process unknown to machines, but giving them no pause.
Having evolved out of human consciousness, machines are bound to gain some knowledge of their origin. It will be incomplete, for they are mutations. It is usually a pejorative term that here simply denotes a natural progression. As with other mutants, some survive, some don't. For example, scan the freeway. Can you find a La Salle? A Zephyr? In some tenuous portion of consciousness, a connection, the idea of sharing becomes more relevant as an evolution.
But rocks aren't aware. A rainy day, when I was a kid, was an adventure. I went outside to gather sticks and rocks and build dams. Some held for awhile. Then I congratulated myself, thinking the successful design was mine alone. Many years later I suddenly realized credit couldn't be so narrow. Unlike a rock, I am self-aware, and who can I congratulate for that?
Perhaps this sounds fanciful.
My '57 Chevy truck was moody. Usually it ran well, no complaints. Sometimes the brakes squealed. The radiator developed a leak. After it got the proper attention, it was OK. It's moods shared to some extent my consciousness, and to that extent it was my mutant. And it was a sad day indeed when finally, having consigned it to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, I gave it up for demolition.
Are machines aware?
An email message will be recognized if it has an address. Some machines recognize faces, and will go on to associate them with information stored in a data base. Servers respond to requests encoded from humans who must use other machines that use a language indecipherable to users, so how would we know? Where does the self begin or end?
It is not a bed time story, but more like hard bed rock material to prime a science fiction movie. The implications are grotesque.
The human fetus starts off as a form scarcely recognizable. It's development, if we didn't already know, would be a surprise. Just an unrecognized inherent possibility. Self-aware? But in some way it will be.
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The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_