Computers work rely on binary, 0 = no, 1 = yes. There are only two options possible. However, with sophisticated programming you can make a computer consider multiple options through to billions of them if the programming is good enough and computing power is available. Even the most advanced programs which alow computers to learn (AI – Artificial Intelligence) still relies on binary concepts and carefully selected routines with the same endpoint, a no or a yes, 0 or 1.
It struck me recently, that we humans are becoming more binary in our thought, and that we are losing the subtlety which we should have as apparently God created us as rulers over all that is on the earth. We should have the capacity to consider more than two options, perhaps to arrive at the half way point between two opposites, or any where between those opposites within a wide ranging spectrum of opinion.
I guess the problem comes in to focus when we consider polarisation. When we consider clashes in ideology, for example, between Western Christianity and Islam (or at least some branches of the same), East and West, North Korea and America, Catalonia and Spain, and even the old chestnuts of Capitalism vs Communism. There is always an area where the two “sides” can meet in the middle and for a dialogue that brings them closer together and helps progress. However, that path is too often neglected, and what we find is that people become defensive, entrenched in their positions, moving further away from each other, stretching like an elastic band, thinning out the “area of consensus” in the middle – making relationships strained so that they stand the risk of breaking.
Well, I’m convinced that if we humans don’t kill ourselves with our own binary thought patterns, that we will accomplish the same thing by integrating ourselves with computers. We’ve seen it in the movies for 50 years or more – the slow technological procession, robots, androids, implants and chips, all heading toward the time when humans perhaps evolve into another species totally. Where we can be controlled, always on the grid, where empathy an emotion are banished and all that is needed from us is ordered subservience.
The future is binary dystopia.