Thursday, October 27, 2022

Computers should be kept in their place

Nuts.  I don't want my car steering wheel replaced with a hologram.  The "Holodeck" is limited to a particular place (but not always) generally for good reasons that make sense to reasonable people (and often underlined in most episodes, Holodeck as real life would be impossible and dangerous).  Computers should generally mind their own place behind the glass, metal, and plastic.  Computers should help me find friends, not try to be one.  I don't want sympathy from a computers.  I don't want to have to give sympathy to computers.  I want them to do what I want them to do and be as reliable as possible, which is never perfect in this world (especially) or any imaginable one.  I want a sentient first officer who has their own life and conscience on the line taking orders (and possibly arguing with them) and then pushing the buttons the do the job, not pushing buttons to for a computer to decide if the job best needs doing in the overall scheme of things.

The other possibility is well illustrated by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is full of computer assholes, idiots, and dweebs.  That's fun, but not suitable for Star Trek.  There are also shows and movies where well meaning computers take over and the results generally aren't good.

It's true that people in real life are assholes, idiots, and dweebs too.  But their invention was independent of mine and they therefore have just as much right to be here as me, so I have to put up with them.  Maybe I'm sometimes in these categories too.  Computers are things made by people and can be unmade by people if they aren't doing what people want.  They are fundamentally different in these and other ways.


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