Hallelujah, Brother!

If a living human being has the right to be creative, and by chance is creative almost all of the time, sometimes even without the person expecting it. If a factory owned by BIC operates in France, creating lighters that are to be shipped all over, one of which I will eventually use to light fire anything I deem worthy, be it cigarette, blunt, or candle. This factory and it's machines, all are programmed and designed and engineered and work efficiently and without complication, most are high tech and require little, if any, continuous adjustment. These machines are not necessarily 'artificial intelligence' but do represent, in some way, a machine doing a certain job that almost 99% of the time, a human could do just as well. The issue is mainly related to budget concerns, as it is obviously cheaper to keep a machine running than to hire and continually pay a worker.

Yet, there is ALWAYS at least 1 person, watching, inspecting, or in some way involved in the machine's actions.

The main distinction between Homo sapiens and computers or animals, is the ability to create from nothing. To innovate and evolved, survive and invent, by simple necessity, is human nature. Technology is proof of how far we have come in only a century; imagine 100 years from now?

When we get there, if we do at all, and artificial intelligence, real robots who could perform complicated, instinctual, intricate actions and thoughts, is indeed created by scientists, what becomes of the self? What happens to consciousness? It happens to be similar to the plot of the popular novel I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, but it is nonetheless an interesting thought.

IN OTHER NEWS
1. State of the Union: How President Bush Managed to Address Nothing and Still Come in Under an Hour (Hey, At Least He's Not Wasting Our Time)

2. The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

3. Awkward moments courtesy of your friends and a drunk girl