Hi all
I went to see my granny the other day and this is what followed
Part 1: Reign of the machines?
GRAN: I have been waiting for you for a week now.
ME: You seem very eager granny, what happened.
GRAN: Last week me and my friends went to watch this movie called "Terminator" in which they show that the machines have taken over the earth from the human kind. Do you think that can ever happen? Isn't it a bit too silly?
ME: You know what granny, lemme tell you about the internals of a computer and then you decide for yourself.
GRAN: That is a good idea, at least I wont be scared that my fridge can suck me in, just because I did not clean it properly
Part 2: The Byte will not bite
ME: Your Computer has three main parts, you have to know about. The processor, the RAM and the Hard Drive. When the computer is off everything is on the hard drive and nothing on the RAM. When you switch the computer ON, the processor goes to the hard drive copies your computer's operating system which is Windows and brings it or copies it on to the RAM for you to work.
GRAN: That is when it makes all those moaning and groaning sounds, when I switch it on?
ME: Yup. Then when you click an Icon for example, "MS WORD" or any other application you need, the processor copies the software, from the Hard Drive on to the RAM again.
GRAN: Whats the difference between a RAM and the Hard Drive.
ME: RAM is temporary memory. When you open a Word document and you are typing things, everything is being written on your computer's RAM, but when you press "Save" then only the file gets written or saved on the Hard Drive which is permanent memory. When you switch the computer OFF everything on the RAM gets destroyed but things on the Hard Drive remain.
GRAN: So RAM is my workshop and Hard Drive is the storage, the processor is like a pencil with the help of which I can write or delete stuff, or give it a command to play a movie, and the mouse and the keyboard are instruments through which I can give commands to the processor.
So when I double click on a file on my desktop, I am commanding the processor to fetch the file for me from the Hard Drive which is permanent memory on to the RAM which is temporary memory, so I can work on that file or view it. When I make changes to the file, I have to click save for the processor to know that I intend the changes to be made on the hard drive. If I close without saving the processor will destroy the changes I made on the RAM itself and the Hard drive will have the old copy of the file
ME: Absolutely right. Now your computers Hard Drive is 20 GB or gigabyte. It means it has 20 billion bytes. Byte is the smallest unit of storage in a computer. Every letter or character you type on the keyboard, gets stored in 1 byte of memory.
GRAN: So my computer can store 20 billion characters.
ME: That is right.
GRAN: OK one last thing, my computer has gone slow in the past one week, what should I do about it.
ME: You should run Disk Defragmenter, and Disk Cleanup utilities once every week. Disk Defragmenter puts all the files on your computer together, in a neat manner, just like the books in a library, so when the processor is looking for a file, it finds it real fast. And Disk Cleanup, cleans all the files which you have not used for a long time, along with other unnecessary files.
GRAN: Now that I know about the internal working of the computer, I don't see it as a threat, in fact I see it just as any other machine, with a few metal pieces and a processor which leaves and deletes charges from those metal pieces. How on earth is it possible that they can be like humans or superior, and enslave us.
ME: Not so fast granny. The problem is not that, the computers are like humans, but humans are like computers.
Part 3: The final frontier "Terminator Salvation"
ME: Granny would you agree, if I say that "YOU" are "YOU", not because of your body, not because of your heart, not because of your face or any other physical part, but only because of all the memories you have been saving from the day you were born. Those memories give you your speech, they give you your intelligence. And if we delete those memories you will not be you anymore. In fact you will be, as they say a "vegetable".
GRAN: OK lets say you are right, so what are you getting at?
ME: So saving memories is what makes us human and that is what we do, and saving memories is what the computers do.
GRAN: Not enough, you cant convince me with that logic.
ME: Remember you told me that when you start your computer it makes all those moaning and groaning sounds, that's because files are being moved from the permanent memory to the RAM for your use, doesn't the same thing happen to you when you get up, in the morning, it takes you some time to come to your 100% senses, you drink tea and have shower to wake up fully, that's because it takes time to bring everything to your brain's RAM and make it ready for your use
GRAN: Still not enough, too far fetched.
ME: OK granny, you go for a walk every morning, right.
GRAN: Yes, so does that make me a computer?
ME: Hold on granny. You watch the cars on the road, the people walking by, but does any of that get stored in your memory, no it doesn't, you don't remember any of the cars or the people, when you get back home.
Have you ever wondered why. Because they are all just running on your brain's Visual Cortex, It's the area of the brain which receives the light from the eyes and makes sense of it, in a computer lingo its called "the RAM", the temporary memory. But as soon as there is anything extra-ordinary on the road, like an accident, what happens then.
GRAN: Oh my god, it starts getting saved on my permanent memory, the hard drive?
ME: Now we are on the same page.
Part 4: The Resistance
GRAN: But don't you see, we humans have an Imagination, which the computers can never have, All the progress which the humans have achieved is only because of our Imaginative powers. How do you explain that?
ME: OK give me an example of one of your wildest imaginations.
GRAN: OK the other day I was imagining that I am in a space-shuttle, going to Mars with Daniel Craig.
ME: You had all the necessary images on your brain's hard drive, like a space shuttle, which you must have seen on TV and stored it. Likewise you had images of Mars and Daniel Craig, and finally what you did was just video- edit them, and you made a movie of your own. Just like in a computer we use Video and Picture editors. Copy-Paste.
So when the computers take over, they will use their own video-editors they will do copy-paste like us and call it imagination, or something in their own language.
GRAN: What about dreams? Do you have something for dreams too? Oh god have mercy.
ME: When we go to sleep, our brain runs the Defragmentor and the Disk Cleanup of the brain, to store our saved memories neatly, index them, and to delete many of the memories, which we have not used for a long time, some of which are useless to us, we call it fading memory.
So when all this is happening the files are being moved from one location of the brain, to the other and some of them are being deleted. All this happens at a great speed, our Visual Cortex or RAM being nearby, some of the files play themselves on the Cortex of the brain, at random. That's why our dreams never make sense.
When you were in school, you were really scared of the exams, your brain notes that down, as it's important for your survival and later when you start working, you don't need to be scared of exams any more, so your brain while you are sleeping, moves the "exam-scare" files from the most sensitive part of the brain to the less sensitive part, and that's when you dream that you are in an exam hall and you don't have your pen or you don't remember a thing to write. It keeps moving the files to the less and less sensitive area and with every movement of the files you dream about the exam scare again. After school you start scaring yourself about the job, so later you dream that you are in the office without your pants, or are getting late.
GRAN: Sometimes I dream that I am falling from the roof top of a building and I am scared to death
ME: That's why you have the internal protective mechanism, the constant reminder "Don't worry it's only a dream", that's to protect you from damaging your software, like going into a comma or having a heart attack
GRAN: Makes a little bit sense. What about reproduction, that's the miracle of God, how can the computers reproduce like us the humans?
ME: Most of the computer parts we talked about, can not be made with human hands, they are already being made by machines, the humans only do the final assembling. The computers will reproduce in factories, not the old-fashioned human way of reproduction.
GRAN: What about food, how would they survive?
ME: A laptop battery today is good for a day, but after 50 years they will most probably have nuclear batteries, which will last them for months and get auto recharged by the sun. We need a recharge of food every 3-4 hrs.
Besides all this they have anti-virus and firewalls which are the equivalent of human immune system.
GRAN: Oh my god, so the machines are taking over, they would be a better system than humans, and they would enslave us.
ME: Granny remember I told you, the computers are not like humans but the humans are like computers, they would not take over the world from us, but we would merge into them, we would leave our mortal body store our memories in computers and live for ever
Part 5: Back to the future
GRAN: So is that what cloning is all about, can I get my self cloned and instead of dying like a mere mortal I can live forever in my cloned body?
ME: Now granny there is a big difference between cloning and you being able to live forever.
GRAN: But don't they say when you clone some one you are creating a copy of that person, like they were saying they would clone the US president and if some thing happens to the original, they can use the clone.
ME: Well granny you got it a little wrong there, cloning is like creating a photo copy of the person genetically, or physically, the clone would look like you, would have your height, your hair, your skin, and your allergies as well, but that person would not be you. Remember I told you, that you are you only because of your stored memories, those memories gives you the character, that distinguishes you from everyone else, the memories you have stored right from the time you were born, is what makes you YOU. Your clone cannot go back to your school, or have your childhood neighbors
GRAN: So let me get this straight, when you clone some one you are creating a duplicate HARDWARE of the person, but not the software, and a person is a person because of the software not the hardware. Did I get it right?
ME: Perfect granny
GRAN: So how do I create a software copy of myself, I don't want to die.
ME: If that's the case, all you need to do is live another 50 years and by that time we would for sure have the system to copy all your memories on to a hard drive and you can buy the body of your choice to keep that hard drive in
Part 6: Justice is done
GRAN: Wow how exciting, and how Justified.
ME: Why Justified?
GRAN: With the present body or human system, you work hard all your life, earn all that money and by the time you are comfortably rich you are already old, cannot enjoy the money you have earned all your life. But with the new machine system of humans the richer you are the faster processor-based bodies you can buy, you can buy the body that is more durable than any one else's. So in other words the richer you are the younger you can be. Change your body for the latest version every year. Wow what a life. Wait a moment.....................
What am I saying Oh my god, the machines are here to mate with humans. God don't let this happen to your creation. Please save us.
Disclaimer: The comparison of humans and computers has got nothing to do with known science, it is just the imagination of the writer. Cut and paste.
Awesome...
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