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Rated: E · Short Story · Sci-fi · #2119377
You get to watch history unfold as humanity died out from this robotic utopician future.
There is a new capital good in the world of economics; its people. Technology has shaped humanity in a consistent process because technology itself is made to be constant; due to its programming. This progress can be repeated and manipulated, and therefore can reliably produce the desired product specific to a task needed. By stimulating and replicating chemical states and experiences in the brain, over a gradually shorter period of time as this technology develops: humans are able to become exactly who they need to be and what they are needed for. Humans have become a mass product and are social engineered, which underlines an important idea about humans; they are simply machines even in their own meaning of the word.

As machines are subject to their tasks and can only be that of their code, humans are subject to their reality and can only be that of who they are; the only difference is that machines are more specialized, as they are made to be used, not to live. People have a need to have more and become better than they currently are. Machines are tools made to be used to paint humanity success as a civilization; both in giving a person anything they could ever wish for, and giving them something they could use to achieve a task to a greater ability. Or at least, that how it was, anyways. Proportionate to technology developing, what made humans “human” changed as well.

To become technologically advance and progress as effectively as possible in this endeavor, means to remove or replace any obstacles to this progress. Eventually the only thing blocking humans to become more that what they were as a civilization, was themselves. Machines are more efficient than humans in achieving a task, and even in getting humans what they want. Machines replaced human elements in industry as well as society because they were better at it than humans, and eventually it was no longer an industry where humans used machines directly. The only reason Machines need humans is because increasing more complicated machines are needed to mass produce slightly less complicated machines as technology continues to develop as a whole; this is an unrealistic model for a machine because a given machine cannot make something more complex that itself on its own, information cannot be created from nothing. Furthermore, in order for Machines to develop to greater suit a task, the ambition and need to have a specific task done with greater success is needed as input to this change. Overall, machines are not built to have any desire to complete a task and to progressively self-replicate because they are meant to be used by humans not by machines. Humans are therefore used by machines as a means of direction and management to their development. Machines are used to produce humans, which are used in the process of creating more developed Machines. Hence humanity becoming the newest capital good. The production of a person wasn’t an easy task though.

The main problem with creating people based on a model is their biological nature. Cells, D.N.A, and pretty much any part of the human body is subject to mutation or damage at any point in its life span. Any physical and or mental abnormality or damage creates an undesirable person and is usually replaced and thrown away, which costs resources. Furthermore, the ideal model of human, either used as management or as a consumer, is based on a person’s phenotype genetics; its physical skills, abilities, and appearance (which is arbitrary and always disregarded). However, a person can only develop any phenotype gene as far as it’s defined in its associated genotype gene. Therefore, as technology advanced, eventually the process included more and more systematic steps of genetic engineering; to produce the perfect human for a machine. Humans were more controlled, and became less diverse.

The domination of the human race wasn’t without controversy over the years. There were many riots, petitions, and civil moments against the technology advance because people felt technology was beginning to attack their individuality, the arts, culture, and the environment. The greater presence machines were in day to day life, the greater portion of the public came to fight it. At the end of the day, no one could live without technology and technology was everywhere, so it became increasingly harder and harder to fight something that people were beginning to identify with. The power belonged to those who had money and profited the most from the technological advance; whom had machines built for security reasons. People were either killed off, died off, or became part of the population dependant on the passive thought process that machines lived on. Later on, came the first automatic leaders managed by a groups of human advisers. It was around that point in time in which marked the end of human leadership. Humans managed, upgraded, and directed what issues these leaders focused on, but all the active political and even small decisions in society were made digitally.

Humans are either built to be in the need of constant stimulation and processing things, the consumer, or in the need of significance and self-importance, the manager. A rare glitch in the programing of social engineering machines can cause the user to feel the need to create in order to simulate themselves and to feel self-important; in which the two modes of human get combined together. This is a rare phenomenon in society called “the artist”. They will try to create anything from a thing with colour on it, a blend of sounds by hitting things, or even attempting to write something. In the past, this was a primitive form of stimulation and expression, but humans have long been developed for the need or desire of such obsolete tasks. There are now more advanced methods of pleasure and beauty created by machines, and the time spend on art or music can be better applied to something more meaningful towards society as a whole. Managers are told to obtain artists so that they can map out their manufacturer plants and or to figure out the cause of this glitch; whatever comes first. The difficulty to patch the glitch is due to machines simply disposing of an artist thinking it has suffered from a mental abnormality or damage; the limited number of artists sent in to be analyzed has given analytic machines too few data points to understand the problem fully.

Artist aren’t considered dangerous, but some in the past have been known to made active decisions. One such artist that is known a little in folk lore, presented philosophy as it was being disposed of. It discussed themes of love, happiness, and active thought as being the real determinant of a successful society, rather than the other way around. He deemed that humanity is meaningful and functional as a living organism as well as the many individuals that make it up. To forget how to be an individual, no matter how imperfect, means to forget how to be human. The following minutes after their statement rose some controversy. A counted 2.35790x10^-19% of the manager and consumer population had sort of changed their opinions in social philosophy. The consumer-based population instructed machines to make memes and humour on the topic, while the manager-base’s population instructed argument bots to calculate the perfect argument on the topic. In the pro-machine world, a machine created a perfect counterargument that had far more points and proof on the topic to dispel this opinion. The artist was taken in to be analyzed and was immediately disregarded any further in society.

Humans became more and more disposable as improved new generation humans made them obsolete. Therefore, the average lifespan of a human gradually shrunk. Eventually the average age of each human became around 15 years old, with massive genetic engineering, as any younger than that the brain and the body was having difficult maturing without causing noticeable defects. Poor health conditions and environmental conditions made three things happen. The limited amount of resources on earth attributed to a massive expand and development in space travel and collecting resources from other planets. The more complex machinery needed more and more parts and materials to make, so to conserve resources, older and obsolete machines were needed to be recycled for their parts. The poor conditions on earth encouraged civilization to expand into space and other planets, and encouraged a massive expand in the development and funding of healthcare. The human body was considered too weak for the majority of development, so effort even from far back has been made to improve it electronically. Then something weird happened.

As many years went on, humans were not doing what they were meant to. As diversity diminished and as they had nothing to live up to, their ambition and direction they gave machines were gone. Even the simulation from birth was only leading to them eventually not being able to be stimulated not matter what happened. They couldn’t manage over the machines because they have no substance to them. They weren’t human. They weren’t a machine. They were simply dead with a pulse. Every part of their body needed a battery and circuit, and in the end not a single breathe or tear mattered to them or to the machines. Nothing was independent, nothing changed, and in the end that was what progress meant because humanity defined progress and that humanity was nothing in itself. They couldn’t even be the tool of their tools. However, everything that once was died out long before then. Humanity died out the second it forgot the values and the individuals it stood for.

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