CYBER PUNK'D

Image courtesy of Videohive.net

CYBER PUNK'D

Shannon or 
Wiener? One gets the credit while the other faded away.

While Claude Shannon is often credited as the daddy of “Information Theory,” when you look at the bigger picture one might instead consider that Mr. Norbert Wiener saw a future no one else could have envisioned, whereas Shannon provided the antecedent means for technology’s inevitable reach toward cybernetics. Man becomes one with the machine, a radical idea even now, is getting ever closer to reality and as Doug Hill purported in an article from several years ago, is evidence that Wiener had been right all along and should soon be getting his dues.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Having long been a trope of the Sci-Fi genre, in another decade’s time, science-fiction is going to seem a lot more familiar as all of Wiener’s harrowing predictions for humanity come true. This is the case, in part, because we’re too far gone already. We've lost control over our technology, relinquishing the ‘humility’ he warned us to covet, insofar as becoming unhealthily dependent upon it and all the while, foolishly believing we aren't slaves to it.

Anyone else get duped into seeing Blade Runner 2049? Hopefully not, but if so, then perhaps you can see the transhumanist hole we’re rapidly digging for ourselves. 

What began with pacemakers and hearing aids ends with "Neurofeeds" and all the fun which comes from jacking Snapchat right into our brains and recording videos with our eyes. Point and click become look and blink. 

--Blink Twice to Confirm the Upload of Your Feed--

Such radical developments are still far off, but every step closer we take with AI, cloning, and genetic modification is just another ethical mile we must be prepared to run come the time.

And while it’s true that humans can’t help but play god when given the opportunity, if history is any indication such hubris always end quite expectedly. So is time to raise a flag? It may all unfold as Wiener predicted, or it may be that we've been getting CyberPUNK’D all along and there’s nothing to worry about, the machines will play nice. 

The only problem is, humans have always had the propensity to overindulge, and let's face it, we won't put the shovel down until making ourselves obsolete...