For the past couple of weeks, I have been covering different manifestations of robots in our armed forces and in society in general. For the most part, robotic proliferation has not been kept a secret. Anybody that has a Mac based product knows the frustrations of being outdated almost immediately, but there is the crux. The rate at which technology is increasing is far ahead of the rate at which technology gets sold. This is what is called the technology curve. But recent developments have made the concept of a technology curve obsoletable in their own right; some products have gained the ability to learn for themselves, growing not at the request of the original manufacturer, but growing through the manipulation of third parties that encourage directions for which others can create applications that increase the abilities of the original product. What does this mean? Essentially, this means that products have the capacity to receive improvement from different sources. Going back to our Mac idea, the IPhone does not just rely on Macintosh to create updates; by creating the application market, they are essentially creating a network that allows users and fans to create applications that can possibly make their original product better. So let’s continue on this trend of thought.

Another popular computer game that relies on the input of thousands of users are games like World of Warcraft. These MMORPGs have some really interesting features; they are capable of updating the game content in real-time and allow users to manipulate the UI to suit their particular needs. This means that the game is no longer just a simple product that is made and then handed out to the players, but the game actually grows along with the players. Whenever content becomes added, the source of the content is now ambiguous or even in some cases, irrelevant. No one really cares who took the time to create the helpful “patch” or “update” or “app”; the only real concern with the new piece of programming is whether or not it makes the product better/more accessible/more unique/more individual/etc. This model works well when the product in question is something simple like an IPhone, a billion dollar video game, and other trifles. What some people are starting to predict is the emergence of a new kind of thought process: a living simultaneous human network that might just herald the next stage of human evolution. Enter the technological singularity.

Carl Jung once theorized that there was something called a “collective unconscious.” If you look at the graph over here to the left, you can get an idea of the concept that he was trying to express. Essentially, he was relating the human experience as universal at a certain level. Sure, everyone has their own personal consciousness where you are in control of your actions (most of the time) and you are able to interact with others at their personal conscious level. This is represented by the little man on the chart over here. That is your individual conscious. But beyond that, there are several features that seem to be universal to all human beings. Jung realized that everybody shares emotional and psychological expressions that culminate in the “human experience.” These shared emotional and psychological expressions are the basis for a history that is considered shared and a force that one finds themselves born into. A crafty philosopher might ask how that collective unconscious was started, but that is like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? The real point is that whichever came first, they are both real today.

So what does this have to do with Technological Singularity? Jung’s “collective” was “unconscious;” the collective of a technological singularity would be completely conscious. Here is a definition that I think serves well; it comes from The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence: “The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies that are often mentioned as heading in this direction. The most commonly mentioned is probably Artificial Intelligence, but there are others: direct brain-computer interfaces, biological augmentation of the brain, genetic engineering, ultra-high-resolution scans of the brain followed by computer emulation. Some of these technologies seem likely to arrive much earlier than the others, but there are nonetheless several independent technologies all heading in the direction of the Singularity – several different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.” If this sounds like something that is out of a sci-fi horror movie, then you’re probably still sane. Anxieties about the increase in human-robot relations have been stemming since the Luddite Rebellion of the 1800s. The fear is that humans will fall under the control of some robot that speaks like a speak-and-spell and hates all humans because they are too emotional/illogical/unpredictable/weak/whatever-the-writers-can-conceive. But this fear is really the same underlying fear that people have harvested towards each other. Before machines were part of the equation, people were engaging in battles against other people that they found too emotional/illogical/unpredictable/weak/whatever-the-politicians-can-conceive. The key is that the machines do not really have this power on their own; they are the tools that people use, but there does seem to be a change occurring; people and machines (robots) are becoming indistinguishable from each other. This will have interesting implications for the future.

Essentially, what some people are predicting (and others are working feverishly to actually accomplish) is the union of humankind and machines. Personally, I think that the separation between humans and machines is a trick of semantics; humans and machines have been in harmony since the days when someone figured out how to sharpen a spear or reasoned how to dig a ditch to hold rain-water. But the future union of machines and humans will be a far more deeper wave. A network just like the one in video games and cell phones will be online for all of us; we will be able to receive everyone’s input on a process; whenever someone learns something it will instantly become available to everyone else for their benefit. Bodies will be different, possibly even changeable, and gender will be a thing of the past. As humans and machines will meld further and further, they will begin to be seamless; things like race, ethnicity, gender, and appearance will not be hereditary markers of anything, they will be identities that can be adopted or discarded depending on one’s inclinations. Imagine a world in which there is no separation between the individual and the communal; if you’re finding it hard to imagine, that is because there is absolutely no way to describe the kind of connectivity and network that is being proposed here. The cognitive foundation that is being proposed here is the next step in human evolution. For more information and other links, please visit this site. See you next week.

Hey Folks,

Ben here to let you all know that Mr. Wolff will be taking a rant break for the foreseeable future. I’m sure that you are all wondering why we must go rantless on Thursdays, so please allow me to fill you in on the dark events that transpired to bring us sadder hump days. You see, Mr. Wolff is well known for having a collection of the finest looking ladies at his beck and call, and there are some who take great umbrage at our blogger’s menagerie of beauty. It was for this reason that Mr. Wolff’s harem was shanghaied by a cadre of Sasquatches. Upon finding his home disheveled and covered in man-beast hair that was not his own, Mr. Wolff went into a rage, punted the nearest midget a full city block and vowed vengeance against the yeti-kin that would deprive him of nook nook. And so, Mr. Wolff has embarked upon a journey to of ho retrieval and monster whumpery.

No one is sadder about the loss of Mr. Wolff than I. Without him my week will far be less angry, and there will be way fewer pictures of scantily clad celebrities on my computer.Throughout his brief time with us here at Semantink, Wolff has taught me so much, most of which I can’t really talk about in mixed company. If you are a newcomer to the site, or have never gotten a chance to read the writings of Mr. Wolff, I encourage you to take some time and go back and read his excellent work in our blog archive. I also thought that today we could go back and remember some of Mr. Wolff’s finest rants…

Cosplay: In Mr. Wolff’s first full length rant, he touched on the potential for greatness from hot she-cosplayers. He also showed the ugly (and fat) side of cosplay, and showed us all that not everyone was meant to participate in such events. How could we forget this?

Mr. Wolff later found this man and beat him with his own wig.

My favorite line from this rant has to be:

“…my heart is racing and I feel an urgency at the tips of my fingers as if somewhere, an overweight, under-sunned,  gap-toothed, overly-hairy, cankled beast dressed as Super Girl has just killed a child by merely making itself visible.  Damn you poorly-costumed villain.  Damn you to Cosplay Hell…”

Heroes: Mr. Wolff would often focus his rants on the entertainment industry. Movies, books, TV, all were fields he felt (and rightly so) qualified to rant on. In a television-centric blog, Mr. Wolff learned us all on what shows we should be watching, and in the case of Heroes, what shows we should be skipping.

The look in her eyes says “I don’t want to be here”.

I doubt anyone could explain what’s wrong with Heroes as eloquently as this:

“Heroes is like a beautiful woman with a tight premise, supple characters and a nice, round potential — but the crazy b*tch keeps puking on herself!  All she does all day is stick her finger in her butt, smell is and wipe her face leaving a streak across her brow.  Then she throws up on her chest, rubs it all over her body and blows snot out her nose while laughing, snorting and growling uncontrollably.  The potential is there, but she keeps f*cking herself up!!  Somebody please put this b*tch out of her misery.”

Well put Mr. Wolff, well put.

World of Warcraft: In one of his most controversial blogs, Mr. Wolff took on MMORPGers everywhere by ranting against the popular World Of Warcraft. There was a great ammount of vitriol from fans about this post, but in the end, Mr. Wolff made his point. WoW is stupid. Don’t play it, and you won’t be stupid. Continue your basement dwelling ways and risk turning out like this:

Sadly, this paladin will never succeed in his quest to lose his virginity.

I think Mr. Wolff summed it up best:

“…let me just say that I do not condemn WoW, or WoW players.  I don’t think you’re all stupid, useless bags of flesh, rotting in a pile of your own feces — but most of you are.  Grow up, move out of your mother’s basement, get a real job and try finding a member of the opposite (or same if that floats your boat) sex and try, just try, to discover what people did before Warcraft.  Or just trick yourself into thinking your character has some tangible meaning in life and die — I don’t really care.”

It’s like the man drinks thrice distilled wisdom, and then is kind enough to spit it at us.

Sports Illustrated (swimsuit edition): Despite all of his macho talk, Mr Wolff showed that he had a soft side, and a deep respect for women, in this touching piece. He made sure to include the faces of every model he referenced, and even found out their names. Mr. Wolff has been called misogynistic before, but in this blog, he showed the world how much he cared about the opposite sex. Would a misogynist show this?

Thanks Mr. Wolff.

Mr. Wolff even offered us all this generous warning:

“Whatever you do, do NOT go to Sports Illustrated where you would be forced to see a lot more of these “beautiful” models in very little clothing at no cost to you.  And if for some ungodly reason you do go to the site, don’t look at the site alone, like I am or you may be tempted to think impure thoughts and take of your pants. In the dark.  Like me.  Right now…”

God Bless you, Mr. Wolff.

Thank you all for joining me on this bittersweet day of reminiscing. I’m sure that you all are wondering what will be filling in our blog on Thursday moving forward. I will be toting my Comicopea blog over to Thursdays. On Sundays, we will be featuring the works of some of our Semantink writers. I already have some work from MYTHOI writer James Ninness. And one day, if and when he is needed, Mr. Wolff could come back for a guest appearance or two, but not any time soon, Those Sasquatches are some elusive bitches.

It’s official:  The new expansion, Cataclysm, is coming.  I played the WoW but quit about a year ago.  Some friends have been asking me, “Mr. Wolff, will you return and explore this new world with us?”  I’ve thought long and hard about my response, each time saying something profound, akin to, “I dunno.”  But I think I finally have my answer and I’m ready to give it to the world:  No.  I will not be playing World of Warcraft ever again because that game is f*cking stupid.

Now, before you level 80s get all bent and start drafting your hate-mail, allow me to explain why you are retarded. I have a logic behind my answer and I’d love to share it with you.  Perhaps, if all goes well, you will read this blog and come to understand the clusterf*ckery of your ways.  Then maybe, just maybe, you too can ween yourself off of the WoW, heal over time and become a functioning member of society once again.  And I’m not talking to the occasional players who have been stuck at level 39 for the last three years of their life and I have no idea what a Death Knight is.  I’m talking to the hardcore bastards who haven’t seen daylight for more than 1 hour a week and only go outside to run their paper routes in the morning in order to pay their monthly fees to the Blizzard gods.  Yeah, you idiots.

“This is my tier 2 virgin suit.”

Reason #1:  Playing World of Warcraft isn’t real.

I know that some of you believe that you are cool for reaching level 80, getting all epic’d out, raiding the highest heroic dungeons and pwning members of opposing factions, but you’re not.  You’re really not.  It may feel good to be somebody online, but that’s only online.  It’s intangible.  It’s not real.  When you badass Taurens go to your 9-5s, sweating under the fluorescent lights at FedEx Kinkos, or whatever brainless job you may have procured, THAT’s the real you.  You’re not tough.  You cannot fly on a griffin.  And you sure as hell can’t sleigh a dragon.  It’s all make-believe.  Fun?  Sure.  But make-believe.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought I was cool when 60 was the cap and I brought down Onyxia.  But when it was over I was left with an empty hole in my chest, wondering, “Now what?”  I have some new gear?  Well, not really — my avatar has some new gear.  All I have is a backache and a pissed off girlfriend* that I could have been naked-wrestling with, were I not trying to kill a collection of pixels in the shape of a dragon.  I could have been having sex, learning guitar, earning money (not gold, I am referring to US dollars here), reading a book (comic or novel, you choose), having sex, or any number of other REAL activities.  I could have been having sex.  Sex. If right now you are thinking that WoW is better than sex, you should smash your head into your laptop because you are a lost cause and are currently wasting air for the rest of us.

*A girlfriend is a woman that chooses to date a man exclusively and every once and a while allows said man to rub flesh with her.

This is real. Too real.

Reason #2:  Their are too many Douchebags online for my tastes.

Near the end of my Warlock career (yes I was a lock in the end, but I also had a lvl 80 warrior, mage and priest), I realized that people who play WoW were assholes.  Not all of them.  Some of you are nice.  But more often than not, you’re all a bunch of dicks.  Every time I would look for a party for an instance there was always the bastard who called out some other poor schmuck for not having good enough gear.  THAT“S WHY HE“S RUNNING THE INSTANCE YOU TWAT!  He’s trying to get better gear, gear that exists in the instance we’re about to run!  These are the guys who blame every wipe on somebody else — it’s never their fault.  “Our healer sucks!”  “The tank can’t hold aggro!”  “DPS isn’t high enough!”  Well, the healer can’t heal you fast enough because you’re tanking in cloth you retarded mage!  The tank can’t hold aggro because your hurling frostbolts before he gets a strike in!  And if the DPS isn’t high enough, I guess you’ll just have to hold aggro an extra second or two, you lazy prick!  Look, I know that in some cases, especially heroic instances, you really do need a group on their a-game, but I’m talking about the pricks who make a scene at the entrance to Hellfire Ramparts because they want to run it in two seconds and get all pissy after one wipe.  It’ll be okay.  This isn’t real.  Go jump off a bridge.

Then there is the snide bastards in chat — holy sh*t.  You are the real pain in my ass.  When a n00b asks for help, give ‘em help.  Don’t get all crass and trash talk them because they don’t know as much as you.  In fact, grovel at their feet because while you were in Azeroth, those n00bs were doing things in the real world that probably advance them socially, intellectually, or physically, far beyond yourself.  Like Mamma Wolf always said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say then STFU!”  In truth, all of you snarky bastards are the ones I hope to meet irl so I can smack the sh*t out of your lippy, zitty, pasty faces.  We all know that you only talk tough in the digital world because in the real world you’re flipping my burgers, and I’m sorry about that, I really am.  But it’s not my fault, nor the n00bs, that you are a loser.  So please, don’t confuse being King Warcraft with being ANYTHING in the real world.  It’s not the same.  You may be a mighty lvl 80 in Wow and a virgin in the real world, but if I unplug your computer, you’re just a virgin.

And I’m the idiot because I can’t a Flight Path somewhere…

Reason #3:  It looks like sh*t.

World of Warcraft is one of the ugliest video games on the market today.  Go ahead, try to argue with that.  When they released it, Blizzard made the game such that OUR computers hold all the data.  What they should have done, was keep the graphics and such data on their end, so that they could upgrade them with time — I believe this is called a cloud server?  If it’s not, I don’t care.  The point is that Blizzard didn’t do it and now we have to rely on expansions to up the ante.  This isn’t the end of the world, but it is an annoyance.  When I play a game with great graphics and then switch over to WoW, I realize just how shoddy the whole thing looks.

I realize that this is one of the weaker complaints I have, but it really does get under my skin.  However, to be fair, a macro  surfaced allowing players to get quite a bit more out of their gaming experience visually, but killing the fun with lagtasticness.  It doesn’t go against my concern because most of us have to choose between gameplay or look — not fair.  In case you missed it from a while back, here’s the how-to:

Reason #4:  I have friends.  Real friends.  Real, human friends that live on Earth.

This is going to depress some of you, but I’m going to go through with it anyways.  I don’t want you to go home and cut yourself, but I do want you to try and socialize with something other than Night/Blood Elves.

Friends are people with whom one shares common interests and enjoys the mutual company.  You may think you have friends in WoW, but those aren’t friends, those are guild members — it’s not the same.  You see, with my friends I can actually see their REAL faces, touch them, hear them and all at the same time!  We can also do things that you can’t do in the World of Warcraft, like: see a movie, go to a concert, play good video games, or maybe just watch some TV.  You die hard WoWers probably don’t have real friends.  You may have acquaintances or people you recognize, but those aren’t friends.  The pizza guy isn’t your friend.  Celebrities you think about when you touch yourself are not your friends.

These are pixels, not friends.

Now, in closing, let me just say that I do not condemn WoW, or WoW players.  I don’t think you’re all stupid, useless bags of flesh, rotting in a pile of your own feces — but most of you are.  Grow up, move out of your mother’s basement, get a real job and try finding a member of the opposite (or same if that floats your boat) sex and try, just try, to discover what people did before Warcraft.  Or just trick yourself into thinking your character has some tangible meaning in life and die — I don’t really care.

Until next time -

Mr. Wolff

PS: Buy Mythoi.  Seriously.  Buy it.