Sunday, March 21, 2010

Doomsday?

Even though I believe that humankind's collective mission is to create heaven on earth using science and technology, some predict a doomsday resulting from technology. Technology has, no doubt, affected and changed the development and lifestyle of billions of people around the globe. Traditional advertising is suffering a massive decline. While cell phones have earned an 18.1 % increase and computers have earned a 9.2% increase, newspapers have suffered an 18.7 % decline, television has suffered a 10.1 % decline, radio has suffered an 11.7 % decline, and magazines have suffered a 14.8 % decline. Furthermore, while ten million individual visitors visit abc, NBC, and Fox News each month, 250 million visit myspace, you tube, and facebook each month. These three news channels have existed "for a combined 200 years," while none of the three mentioned websites even existed six years ago. What does the future have in store? According to reports, "the mobile device will be the worlds primary connection tool to the Internet in twenty twenty." Furthermore, according to Ray Kurzweil, "what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years."
If I were to conjure a doomsday, here's what it might look like:

It is the hour when day turns into night- when disaster strikes and the world is turned upside down. It was predicted, but not always believed. It is the hour when the prophecies come true. The earth shakes, the ground ruptures, yet the initial effect is slight in comparison to what is to come. The subsequent results throw the world into chaos. They say that the lucky ones were those who went first, taken down by the initial blow.
Even though the disaster struck in _____, billowing through the largest city in the world on a wave of destruction, no one knew the measure of the damage. They say it was caused by the collapse of a protective force field- a fairly new technological creation. It collapsed exploding into millions of invisible fragments that wedged into various nooks and crannies. One displaced the brain of a mega-robot, causing the whole thing to combust. The explosion gorged a whole in the earth's surface, causing further cracks to spread along the ground. Meanwhile, buildings burst into flames and scores of people ran out screaming.
Communication was virtually unavailable, except for those with the icom (i.e. the icommunication device of the astreal effect) in their pocket. The icom is the size of a rice grain. It is the result of years of mental labor by the USSS (Underground Simulated Science Society). Picking up on particles of an unseen realm, the chip can be used for communication to anywhere in the universe without the use of old-fashioned satellites. When we first got word of the disaster, our robotic disaster preparedness team gathered supplies- including food/water electronic simulators, modern-day crowbars called vibe-electro manipulators that manipulate invisible vibrations to remove large chunks of rubble, and metal re-oxygenators to mechanically work the body until it can sustain life. Jumping into the aerodynamite transporters, the team arrived in _____ after leaving ____ on the other side of the earth 2.3 seconds later. However, upon arriving, they found the chasm had slowly been growing, spouting lava in massive spurts. However, there was silence. Throughout the following months, the economy suffered, war broke out, water stopped flowing, and the madness continued. The worst part was the crazy people who broke out in cries of ear-piercing horror in the middle of the night. Everything was magnified in my ears. The rest of the time, their was silence, stinking with the smell of fear.
Then, the robots went crazy. They broke out into tantrums of madness. One by one they entered into a state of rage. They were imbued with our intellect and the strength of monsters. It was as if the "Land of the Apes" gained a parallel with the robots.

And then, one day, it ended.
The end wasn't the end.
The universe enveloped me in a starry blanket.
I walked into what should have been nothingness.
As the end wasn't the end, the "nothingness" wasn't nothingness.
It was the immensity of the universe, and with that I woke up from my dream to the beauty of the world.
I pulled the blanket down and knew what I needed to do.

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