The game is over. The machines have already won. Skynet has been on line and self aware for quite some time now, although the warheads haven’t quite flown just yet. It seems that it’s taking a more subtle approach in murdering humanity.
Take, for instance, Strava, the social media platform for running and cycling that turns every ride into a race. “Connect with friends,” they say, “and make the most of every run and ride” by racing the world with your GPS unit as the timekeeper.
What could go wrong with tens of thousands of people treating each and every road and trail like a race course at any hour of the day?
But while Strava has raised the hackles of critics inside and outside of the cycling community for encouraging impolite and unsafe riding on uncontrolled public roadways and trails, it’s probably a stretch to say that the software is the brainchild of an autonomous supercomputer bent on human destruction.
A stretch, that is, until you pair it with the newest craze to occlude the streets: Pokemon Go.
In the week or so that Nintendo’s mobile gaming platform has been live, it’s pulled millions of pale, doughy enthusiasts from their basements and thrust them staggering into traffic. The result has been predictably horrifying.
At the intersection of self-styled professionals racing against the cloud and cartoon enthusiasts wandering blindly through the world in search of an artificially rare collection of 1’s and 0’s there can only be chaos.
Skynet’s plan is taking shape. I heard it’s only a matter of time before Mario Kart Go delivers humanity’s coup de grace.
Now, critics of my theory (there are sure to be one or two) could point out that citizens perishing in explosions of carbon fiber splinters or underneath a bus at the cusp of capturing the elusive Vaporeon have only fallen victim to their own loss of context. That Skynet’s greatest weapon is not a weapon at all, but simply a means to make the annoying and destructive aspects of human nature a lot more fun.
Take Twitter. It’s a remarkable tool for pure democracy and unfettered free speech. It allows the anonymous voice of the masses to be felt from uprisings in Tunisia to protests in Ferguson, MO. It’s one of the last bastions of truly organic communication.
It also got this guy nominated:
And so maybe the critics are right. It’s not that we’ve relinquished too much autonomy to the computer on the dashboard, but not quite enough.
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