People are just machines.
It's amazing how similar we are to machines. We have jobs that
we are designed to be able to complete easily, and we do just
that. It may seem simple to us, but have you ever watched a cat
try to turn a doorknob? Have you ever tried to jump up to the
top of your china cabinet in a single bound? If you just tried
to accomplish that one, try shrinking yourself to one-tenth your
current size and try again, even harder right? We are designed
to do specific things, just like machines.
We're not talking Darwin here, why we are designed the way we
are is not what I'm investigating here. Whether we randomly have
opposable thumbs, or if God put them there, whether we beat
other similar species because of our superior eyesight, or we
were just plain old lucky, is inconsequential to me. We're here
and I like it.
But we are just another type of machine. We need fuel, we have
exhaust, we break down, we error, we complete tasks
successfully, and we even have keys to make us start. Our keys
are not small, silver, and painful when you sit on them, our
keys are made out of motivation. I like learning new things,
cash is a good motivator too, and I suppose some people enjoy
shiny objects, but sometimes I work and sometimes I don't, it
depends if I have the right key. We are organic machines, built
by nature.
Compare us to a computer for instance. Lets look at the basic
components of a computer: RAM, processor, the hard drive, a
cooling system, a motherboard, an interface, and an assortment
of other accessories that vary from computer to computer in
quality and quantity. Now the main difference is that a slower
computer is an older computer; yet an older human is not
necessarily a slower human, at least not in thinking capacity.
The RAM is random access memory, or in a human, short term
memory. The processor, the ability to quickly determine what the
hell is happening around you. Hard drives can be fast or slow,
faster hard drives, such as SCSI drives, can bring information
up much quicker than a standard hard drive.
How hard is it for you to remember details of an event that
happened when you were ten years old? Maybe you're a SCSI and
you can remember every shirt you ever wore, but most of us are
just regular old hard drives. Computers have cooling systems, we
have cooling systems, and we sweat so that evaporation can cool
our outer shells. You know what happens if a human overheats,
fevers can be very dangerous, much like an over heated computer,
something can break. The motherboard in our computers are very
similar to our central nervous system, they both control the
wheelings and dealings of the rest of the components. And of
course a computers interface, or our face; both show what is
happening inside. How about the mouse and keyboard, much like
our hands.
Did we create a computer in our own image? I doubt very highly
that someone looked at the machine that is a human, and decided
to base a computer system on us. If we didn't do it on purpose,
maybe there are standards that all functioning nodes must meet?
That would imply that we are much closer to the creations we
create than we generally accept. It also suggests that something
created us, whether it be DNA and Darwin's concepts, or God
Almighty.
So the next time your computer isn't doing exactly what you want
it to do, don't get mad, don't smack it, you can swear at it if
you really want because that's what I do, or you can try to
understand what the computer wants. It probably wants something
that makes sense. Think of a computer as a baby, it wants
something that it needs, it just sucks at telling you want it
wants. Or the next time your wife, or father, or great Uncle Bob
get sentimental over throwing out an old vehicle, don't laugh.
The machine is a part of us, and not just because we invented,
built, used, and destroyed it. It's a part of us because it some
ways, in a lot of ways, it's just like us.