Robots And Love Quotes

Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

The music coming from inside sounded like robots fucking. And complaining about it. In rhythmic monotone. European robots.

I always knew there was no one who is going to accept my flaws and understand my brokenness.And i knew it very well that nobody would hold my hand when the wind of darkness overcome my life so i just pushed them,i pushed them all away.

If you don’t know how to love, then any old robot or mechanical device would best suit your relationship style. In this situation, vacuum cleaners might make the best lovers.

Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.”             -I did nothing for you.”             -You loved me and your love made me--human.

Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule

my love for June and Jake is an anchor, bound with unbreakable chains. Weighing me down, but at the same time... keeping me grounded. Keeping me here. Tying me to the world. It hurts, but it's supposed to, because that's what it means to be alive. And that's comforting, actually. The realization that I'm not some robot devoid of emotions. That I still have the ability to feel things this brutally, this immediate and sharp.

My own self-consciousness cries out to me coldly: how does one love zero?

Well, if you’re talking about love, why did you bring up cocaine?

There are three things that robots cannot do," wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote "Show preference without reason (LOVE)" and then "Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)" and finally "Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).

Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, narrowing, dangerous form of behavior. The romantic poetry and fiction of the last 200 years has quite blinded us to the fact that emotions are an active and harmful form of stupor. Any peasant can tell you that. Beware of emotions. Any child can tell you that. Watch out for the emotional person. He is a lurching lunatic. Emotions are caused by biochemical secretions in the body to serve during the state of acute emergency. An emotional person is a blind, crazed maniac. Emotions are addictive and narcotic and stupefacient. Do not trust anyone who comes on emotional. What are the emotions? In a book entitled Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, written when I was a psychologist, I presented classifications of emotions and detailed descriptions of their moderate and extreme manifestations. Emotions are all based on fear. [...] The emotional person cannot think; he cannot perform any effective game action (except in acts of physical aggression and strength). The emotional person is turned off sensually. His body is a churning robot. [...] The only state in which we can learn, harmonize, grow, merge, join, understand is the absence of emotion. This is called bliss or ecstasy, attained through centering the emotions. [...] Conscious love is not an emotion; it is serene merging with yourself, with other people, with other forms of energy. Love cannot exist in an emotional state. [...] The great kick of the mystic experience, the exultant, ecstatic hit, is the sudden relief from emotional pressure. Did you imagine that there could be emotions in heaven? Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise.

Indeed, many movies about artificial intelligence are so divorced from scientific reality that one suspects they are just allegories of completely different concerns. Thus the 2015 movie Ex Machina seems to be about an AI expert who falls in love with a female robot only to be duped and manipulated by her. But in reality, this is not a movie about the human fear of intelligent robots. It is a movie about the male fear of intelligent women, and in particular the fear that female liberation might lead to female domination. Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it’s probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics. For why on earth would an AI have a sexual or a gender identity? Sex is a characteristic of organic multicellular beings. What can it possibly mean for a non-organic cybernetic being?

Those who love only half of him do not live him at all.

The coming era of Artificial Intelligence will not be the era of war, but be the era of deep compassion, non-violence, and love.

The true source of our life is our consciousness and awareness, without which we'd just be a robot or a computer with no operator.

There's got to be more to life than just living," Foyle said to the robot. "Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts." "Why can't we all move forward together?" "Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow." "Who leads?" "The men who must...driven men, compelled men." "Freak men." "You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." "Thank you very much." "My pleasure, sir." "You've saved the day." "Always a lovely day somewhere, sir," the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled, and collapsed.

The day i met Cameron,the pieces started to flow into place,and the night that Cameron kissed me,the day that he sat next to me and told that he loved me,that was when the last piece of me were snapped into place.Every other second,minute,hour that i spent with Cameron after that moment made the last piece of my puzzle grow stronger,so that it made the damaged,the broken pieces become insignificant-mere background noise.But Cameron had taken the last piece of the puzzle with him,and a black hole was all that was left in its stead.How do you recover from that? How do you survive?You don't, I resolved.There's no coming back from that permanent void left inside of you.You become a shell,going through the motions without emotion,like a robot,while the rest of me was wherever Cameron was...

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.

You can spread an ideology only by bombs. Either by real bombs or love bombs (manipulation).

But I do not know how to act like a mother.” “Oh, it’s nothing, you just have to provide the gosling with food and water and shelter, make him feel loved but don’t pamper him too much, keep him away from danger, and make sure he learns to walk and talk and swim and fly and get along with others and look after himself. And that’s really all there is to motherhood!” The

Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot – "Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots." And I thought, exactly. That’s the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations. It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.

But the modern-day church doesn’t like to wander or wait. The modern-day church likes results. Convinced the gospel is a product we’ve got to sell to an increasingly shrinking market, we like our people to function as walking advertisements: happy, put-together, finished—proof that this Jesus stuff WORKS! At its best, such a culture generates pews of Stepford Wife–style robots with painted smiles and programmed moves. At its worst, it creates environments where abuse and corruption get covered up to protect reputations and preserve image. “The world is watching,” Christians like to say, “so let’s be on our best behavior and quickly hide the mess. Let’s throw up some before-and-after shots and roll that flashy footage of our miracle product blanching out every sign of dirt, hiding every sign of disease.” But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn’t offer a cure. It doesn’t offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It’s not the real thing.

I search my brain for the truth. “I want it more than anything, just as long as you promise me one thing.” “And what’s that?” “That if at any time it gets to be too much for you, you’ll leave me—walk away and get out.” “That will never happen,” he guarantees me. “You need to give me some credit. You left me, ripped out my heart, and then came back acting like a robot, and you know what? We made it through. You and I, good or bad, belong together. We make each other whole.

Because, if you stop to think of it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world’s ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That’s Rule Three to a robot. Also every ‘good’ human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom—even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That’s Rule Two to a robot. Also, every ‘good’ human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That’s Rule One to a robot. To put it simply—if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man.

For years, I have convinced myself that love is meant to be an act of extreme and transformative caretaking. And so I’ve been more savior than partner. More robot than girl. More nurse than lover.

How much misery…how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won’t or can’t love you. As a species we’re pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If only we could pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total-guilt free promiscuity, there’d be no more sexual torment. You’d never want someone you couldn’t have’ ‘…But think what we’d be giving up…we’d be human robots…there’d be no free choice.’ ‘…we’re human robots anyway, only we’re faulty ones.

If you love your job it never feels like work,

If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots. Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots. Let's take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond.

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. This, right here, was the true abdominal snowman: it felt like something freezing in his stomach. "I love you so much and I just want you to love me like I love you," he said as softly as he could. "You don't need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but 'I love you.

I'm sick of this society. "Earn a living" as if I'm not yet living; lobotomized and robotized from birth, they tell me I can't do anything I want to do in the subtlest and sneakiest ways possible. They want to erase all possible hints that I've been born. I have two centers: love and my desire to sleep.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge--he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil--he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor--he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire--he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy--all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is desired to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was--that robot of the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love--he was not man.

Baley said, sharply, “Nevertheless bound by friendship. Do not, for your own sake, test the force of our—” Now it was he who paused and, as though to his own surprise, completed the sentence impossibly, “—love.

...ideas are definitely unstable, they not only CAN be misused, they invite misuse--and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into lead, or innocence into corruption. And it is nearly as relentless. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road. There is a particularly unattractive and discouragingly common affliction called tunnel vision, which, for all the misery it causes, ought to top the job list at the World Health Organization. Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended. That is how the loving ideas of Jesus Christ became the sinister cliches of Christianity. That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed: the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to "protect the revolution." That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant, minorities seeking peace become militant, minorities seeking equality become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile (a tight asshole being the first symptom of self-repression).

You may know how to operate computers. You may know a lot about aliens or robots. You may be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, specialist… BUT if you don’t know how you operate, why your life is the way it is and how to increase fulfillment, love and peace in your life then all the knowledge and degrees aren’t much worth having!

Robots do not celebrate anything. Celebration is an expression of joy, which cannot be mechanized.

What will we be doing, when everything that can be done, can be done better by robots?

Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice…It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an isolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold a man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality…To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. (The) myth decleares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil-he became a moral being…The evils for which they damn him are reasn, morality, creativeness, joy-all the cardinal values of his existence….the essence of his nature as a man. Whatever he was- that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love- he was not a man.

What you have with Sadie is nothing like what I have with Sadie, so it doesn't even matter. You can fuck anyone," he says. "You can't make games with anyone, though." "I make games with both of you," you point out. "I named Ichigo, for God's sake. I have been with both of you every step of the way. You can't say I haven't been here." "You've been here, sure. But you're fundamentally unimportant. If you weren't here, it would be someone else. You're a tamer of horses. You're an NPC, Marx." An NPC is a character that is not playable by a gamer. It is an AI extra that gives a programmed world verisimilitude. The NPC can be a best friend, a talking computer, a child, a parent, a lover, a robot, a gruff platoon leader, or the villain. Sam, however, means this as an insult---in addition to calling you unimportant, he's saying you're boring and predictable. But the fact is, there is no game without the NPCs. "There's no game without the NPCs," you tell him. "There's just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

When we can trust that it's we who think, feel, and act rather than the ghosts of our parents or well-trained robots, we learn that we can also love, be in relationships, and be in the world without losing ourselves.

They still loved performing tea service—or at least, they loved what it had been. But as they tried to connect to what had once been so captivating, they felt nothing but yawning absence. A void where they’d once been filled.

Heartless reality does not grant humans the lifespan necessary to master every specialty of science, so no one genius in his secret lab can really bring robots, mutants, and clones into the world at his mad whim--it takes a team, masses of funds, and decades. But one man can love all sciences, even if he cannot wield them, and he can inspire children with the model of the mad genius, even if he cannot live it.

Will robot teachers replace human teachers? No, but they can complement them. Moreover, the could be sufficient in situations where there is no alternative––to enable learning while traveling, or while in remote locations, or when one wishes to study a topic for which there is not easy access to teachers. Robot teachers will help make lifelong learning a practicality. They can make it possible to learn no matter where one is in the world, no matter the time of day. Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule

Machines feel emotion, though I don’t know if we can love. But in the past two years, to my great sadness, I’ve discovered that they can hate.

What will happen if our labor is no longer needed? If jobs for warehouse workers, garbage collectors, doctors, lawyers, and journalists are displaced by technology?

What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood. It's what makes us men.

That was it, the most ordinary of miracles. How, by some strange alchemy, two people can meet and know that no power can keep them apart. It was incredible no matter who it happened to.

How to start the journey? Start becoming more and more a witness. Whatever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing; the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience and you missed it. The floor is clean now, but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you had been aware, not only the floor but you would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

I was eight years old when I realized that my G.I. Joe and Optimus Prime were more than friends,” I told her. “Theirs was a forbidden love that dared not speak its name.” “Optimus Prime is a robot,” Jenny said. “Humans and robots can’t be in love.” “Oh,” Sandy groaned. “You shouldn’t have said that.” “Blasphemy!” I hissed at her. “It’s true!” she insisted. “I hope you never have children,” I snapped.

This is a love story,” Michael Dean says, ”but really what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery or the chase, or the nosey female reporter who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely, the serial murder loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets, or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice-trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk. Just as the housewives live for catching glimpses of their own botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors and the rocked out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on hookbook. Because this is reality, they are all in love, madly, truly, with the body-mic clipped to their back-buckle and the producer casually suggesting, “Just one more angle.”, “One more jello shot.”. And the robot loves his master. Alien loves his saucer. Superman loves Lois. Lex and Lana. Luke loves Leia, til he finds out she’s his sister. And the exorcist loves the demon, even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace. As Leo loves Kate, and they both love the sinking ship. And the shark, god the shark, loves to eat. Which is what the Mafioso loves too, eating and money and Pauly and Omertà. The way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar and sometimes loves the other cowboy. As the vampire loves night and neck. And the zombie, don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool, has anyone ever been more love-sick than a zombie, that pale dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms. His very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains. This, too is a love story.

Humans have limitations due to selfish genes, competitive genes, and the fear-driving genes. The aim of compassionate AI is to overcome those limitations through service, care, compassion, honesty, and genuine love.

What's left? Romance. Love's counterfeit free of charge to all. Fall into my arms and the world with its sorrows will shrink up into a tinsel ball. This is the favorite antidote to the cold robot life of faraway perils and nearby apathy. Apathy. From the Greek A Pathos. Want of feeling. But, don't we know, only find the right boy, only find the right girl, and the feeling will be yours. My colleagues tell me I need just such a remedy. Buried up to my neck in pink foam nothing can hurt me now. Safe to feel. All I can feel is you darling.

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand.

The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects … Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. That man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat … The driver could not control it – straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the ‘cat, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow gotten into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him – goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor – its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades – not plowing but surgery … The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

I missed him desperately, even though he’d said he hated me, even though his anger—the rampage at his house, the X through his yearbook page, the cruel way he withdrew from everyone—scared me. I didn’t care if he wasn’t my boyfriend, or even my friend. He was my Jonah. I felt more alone without him now than I’d ever felt before I met him. My life had a hole in it.

I used the word “genitals” too much in this chapter so I went on Twitter to ask what a gender-neutral word for junk was and I got three hundred responses in ten minutes without a single person’s questioning why I was asking. A few of my favorites that I didn’t get to share earlier: “niblets,” “nethers,” “naughty bits,” “no-no zone,” “squish mittens,” “Area 51,” “the danger zone,” “the south 40,” “the situation” (with a suggested circular hand motion near said area), “the Department of the Interior,” “crotchal region,” “fandanglies,” “groinulars,” “groinacopia,” “my hoopty,” “my bidness,” “my chamber of secrets,” “my charcuterie,” “front butt,” “privy parts,” “private parts,” “pirate parts” (which I suspect was a typo but now I’m embracing it), and my personal favorite, “the good china.” This is exactly why I love the Internet. That and the fact that it’s where those fancy dictionary robots that yell “cockchafer” at each other live. The Internet is a goddamn wonderland, y’all.

They heard rumors of other robot ponies [...] who were left to themselves after their mistresses and masters had grown weary of them, falling into a stupor before their hydraulic limbs squealed and locked, freezing up forever while their circuit boards fizzled and died. It sounded to Jenn that they had died of broken hearts— but to everyone else, they were just defective.

You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water. But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing. And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.

Arturo Vega: I always thought the ONLY way to really conquer evil is to make love to it. My favourite dream is always the one where I face the devil. I'm in the nude and the devil appears, and he is a beautiful blue. He looks like a mannequin, he looks like a robot. He doesn't have any clothes on, of course, and he's blue and shiny. I keep hearing voices that say, "It's him! It's him!" And I go, "Okay." So he comes and faces me and I look at him and he's a little taller than me, not much taller, but a little taller, and I say, "I like you." And he says, "I like you too." But he starts beating me up, RA RA RA RA, and I'm down on the floor - and then all of the sudden, he turns into a little baby, like a baby, just a few months old, and then I fuck him, ha ha ha ha. And while I'm fucking him, he's moving his hands, he's moving them like a helpless baby. So I always thought that to conquer evil, you have to make love to it. You have to understand it.

There’s no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism. “We can’t, damn it, we can’t. Not as long as we don’t understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can’t measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.

The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature.

How do you define a boyfriend? If a boyfriend is the first person you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last face you see before you fall asleep, then I was in love with Jonah. But if a boyfriend had to involve physical chemistry and kissing and sex and stuff, then, no, he wasn’t that.

Detachment is not a cold, hostile withdrawal; a resigned, despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way; a robotical walk through life oblivious to, and totally unaffected by people and problems; a Pollyanna-like ignorant bliss; a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others; a severing of our relationships. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern... Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve, and that worrying doesn't help. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people's responsibilities and tend to our own instead. If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. And we give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change things we can't. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could, we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. And we try to live happily — focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that. We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more. Detachment involves "present moment living" — living in the here and now. We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it. We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future. We make the most of each day.

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)

You do want him to survive, don’t you?” said the goose. “Yes, I do want him to survive,” said the robot. “But I do not know how to act like a mother.” “Oh, it’s nothing, you just have to provide the gosling with food and water and shelter, make him feel loved but don’t pamper him too much, keep him away from danger, and make sure he learns to walk and talk and swim and fly and get along with others and look after himself. And that’s really all there is to motherhood!

Our life was so extraordinary and passionate, so intense if you like, because we were around each other all the time. We socialised together, and we worked together, and we loved together. When we all set off for our first season on the South coast of England - what we were really searching for was our tribe. Something about those years was the bringing together of ‘our tribe.’ These are the people who shaped me. We’re the pranksters, the misfits, the bohemians, the court jesters, the comedians, the crackpots, the Carefree Scamps, the nomads and free spirits. Without people like us the world would be full of humans who are little more than robots I love chaotic human beings, people who don’t follow the rules, who can’t be categorised, but whose loyalty is stronger than blood, and whose integrity is hard as nails.

Because it’s the way the world works,” I finally said. “We can’t have everything we want without making some compromises. If humans were robots, I’d agree with your assessment, but we’re not. We have feelings, and if it weren’t for love, the human race wouldn’t survive. Procreation, protection, motivation. It all hinges on that one emotion.

While I was busy wondering if we were expecting anybody, it took me by surprise when an arm—which I was starting to get very well acquainted with at this rate—snaked around my waist and pulled me backward. My ass landed on something hard and hot, immediately molding into the space. Aaron’s lap. His breath caressed the shell of my ear. “You didn’t say good morning.” My back straightened as I remembered my lame runaway moment. “You almost made me drop my cookie, Mr. Robot.” It was so weird, so strange, calling him that, like I had done so many times in the past. As if that belonged to a whole different life. To two different people. Aaron chuckled, and it tickled my neck. “I wouldn’t dare. I know better than that.” His arm tightened around me, and I had to restrain myself from wrapping my hands around it. “What are you doing?” I whispered loudly. Charo would come back in at any second. “I was feeling lonely,” he admitted, lowering his voice and making my mind fly with everything he wasn’t saying. Stupid. I need to stop being stupid. “And if I’m going to sit through this one-sided interrogation, the least you can do is keep me company. Plus, you owe me a conversation.” “I was right there.” My voice came out strangled. “And Charo is not here now.” He hummed, and that noise traveled straight to my lower belly. “She will be back though. You know I like to be extra prepared.

In my early twenties, I was traveling through a small town in Turkey called Cappadocia, when the divine spark of faith reignited within me like lightning. All it took was my eyes to fall upon a woman who was drowned in her worship of God. I watched her pray in an old seventeenth-century animal barn, as if nothing in the world existed but her divine Lover. She did not robotically repeat words of prayer like a formula; rather, every word she uttered came with a silent “I love you, my beloved Lord.” Her words were like synchronized dancers swimming in unison in the ocean of love that poured out of her. She was the first person I had ever seen in my life that not only prayed but she herself became the prayer.

No one asks a robot what he wants.

As we read the Bible, we see that God's role is not that of a scientist managing robots. Neither is God a frustrated artist who left an incomplete work and chose to start an altogether different one. Throughout the biblical testimonies, God is an involved character who loves relentlessly, judges fairly, and joins wholly in ongoing relationship with creation. The Bible itself has a "to be continued" ending, and God is to be understood as continuing in the action of the drama. God still partners with people today in an ongoing story of renewal.

However, one intriguing shift that suggests there are limits to automation was the recent decision by Toyota to systematically put working humans back into the manufacturing process. In quality and manufacturing on a mass scale, Toyota has been a global leader in automation technologies based on the corporate philosophy of kaizen (Japanese for “good change”) or continuous improvement. After pushing its automation processes toward lights-out manufacturing, the company realized that automated factories do not improve themselves. Once Toyota had extraordinary craftsmen that were known as Kami-sama, or “gods” who had the ability to make anything, according to Toyota president Akio Toyoda.49 The craftsmen also had the human ability to act creatively and thus improve the manufacturing process. Now, to add flexibility and creativity back into their factories, Toyota chose to restore a hundred “manual-intensive” workspaces.

Sometimes, sacrifices are necessary for happiness.” “Why?” “Because it’s the way the world works. We can’t have everything we want without making some compromises. If humans were robots, I’d agree with your assessment, but we’re not. We have feelings, and if it weren’t for love, the human race wouldn’t survive. Procreation, protection, motivation. It all hinges on that one emotion.

This woman controls my heartbeats. Every love lyric I sing each night is made for her. Every melody chases her heartbeat, and every chorus begs for her love. It has been brought to my attention that a few people on my management team have chosen to approach the love of my life and tell her that she wasn't good for my image. Due to her looks and the past she had no say in creating, they said she wasn't good enough. It's true, we grew up in the same town, but that didn't mean our home lives were built on the same steady foundation. I was blessed enough to never know struggle. This girl had to fight tooth and nail for everything she was given. She sacrificed her own youth, because she didn't want her little sister to go into the foster system. She gave up love, in order for me to go chase my dreams. She gives and gives in order to make others happy, because that's the person she is. She's the most beautiful human being alive, and for anyone--especially people who are supposed to be in my corner--to say differently disgusts me to my core. I am not a robot. I hurt, I ache, I love, and I cry. And it breaks me to live in a world where I have to be afraid of showing who I really am in order to gain followers. So if you don't like this fact--that I am not single and that I am hopelessly in love--then that's fine. If I lose fans over this, I'm okay with that. I will make every sacrifice in the world from this point on in order to give my love fully to the woman who has given more than she ever should've had to give. I love you, Haze. From the new moon to the fullest. From now until forever.

It takes courage and strength to be sensitive to things and even more strength and courage to own up to it or be vocal about it. Robots, the only things with a perfect lack of emotional capacity, are easily controlled, and I suddenly realized that’s why the military often trains people to suppress their emotions. Unfortunately for them, humans aren't machines. We feel, we love, we cry, we despair, and we rejoice. Anyone who’s ever tried to convince me not to feel is someone I shouldn’t have trusted. The only reason you should shut off your emotions and emulate a robot is if you're doing horrible things. How fatal my decisions have been. How many people would be loving, rejoicing, and feeling right now rather than crying indefinitely in the depths of the afterlife? If only I’d figured this out sooner.

But the modern-day church doesn't like to wander or wait. The modern-day church likes results. Convinced the gospel is a product we've got to sell to an increasingly shrinking market, we like our people to function as walking advertisements: happy, put-together, finished—proof that this Jesus stuff WORKS! At its best, such a culture generates pews of Stepford Wife-style robots with painted smiles and programmed moves. At its worst, it creates environments where abuse and corruption get covered up to protect reputations and preserve image. 'The world is watching,' Christians like to say, 'so let's be on our best behavior and quickly hide the mess. Let's throw up some before-and-after shots and roll that flashy footage of our miracle product blanching out every sign of dirt, hiding every sign of disease.' But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't off a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace.

I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn't do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I'm healthy. I've never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I'm- I'm loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it's- it's nothing like what your originals left. It's a good world, a beautiful world. It's not perfect, but we've fixed it so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet every fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and... and just... tired, y'know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well, I'll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I'm good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like... like something's missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn't explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn't sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

Robot RHR14- "I have been with this human family through all their joys and tragedies, and if there was a tragedy in my existence, it was creating me in the first place. For they dared to give me the concept of Love and Compassion yet withheld my abilty to cry.

Humans who attend directly to vivid cases [of inequality] are capable of great empathy with inequality losers. They are also capable of great compassion and even a desire to help. However, we humans are also quite capable of avoiding contact and exposure that might produce such compassion, and of numbing ourselves to the plight of losers about whom it would be inconvenient to feel empathy. So rich people avoid visiting poor neighborhoods and nations, attractive people avoid socializing with the ugly, and pretty young women become numb to the losses of the men they reject.

One could be forgiven for supposing that rationality (or, more softly, ‘reasonableness’) is irrelevant – and even possibly opposed – to being a good lover. This is perhaps because we tend to think of love as a feeling, rather than as an achievement of intelligence. A reasonable or rational person is not one who is only interested in logic, or someone who tries in a cold, robotic fashion to substitute calculation and analysis for kindness or yearning. We are reasonable when we are moved by accurate explanation. Thus a reasonable person is slow to anger; they do not jump to conclusions

Strange, Eliot thinks, that the androids take to religion. After all they aren’t plagued by the unknowns that draw heartbeats to temples, bibles, and holy men. There is no mystery as to who created the bots, no absence of meaning for their existence as there is with men. If a bot wants to know why he was put here, all he has to do is ask. The engineers who created them, men like Eliot’s father, could tell them, yes, I know exactly why you’re here. You’re here to shovel, to mine, to gather, to build, to plant, to harvest, to fish, to sew, to stitch, to mend, to weld, to solder, to cook, to slaughter, to render, to load, to carry, to steer, to fight, to clean – to serve.

There is nothing wrong with blind obedience, of course, as long as the robots happen to serve benign masters. Even in warfare, reliance on killer robots could ensure that for the first time in history, the laws of war would actually be obeyed on the battlefield. Human soldiers are sometimes driven by their emotions to murder, pillage, and rape in violation of the laws of war. We usually associate emotions with compassion, love, and empathy, but in wartime, the emotions that take control are all to often fear, hatred, and cruelty. Since robots have no emotions, they could be trusted to always adhere to the dry letter of the military code and never be swayed by personal fears and hatreds.

Ever since I met you, even my feet stopped belonging to me and became yours because all they ever seem to want to do is travel to wherever you are. My heart only lives and beats when you're where I can see you. Touch you. Kiss your lips and show you the physical equivalent of how deeply I love you. My soul fucking died after I sent that stupid letter and you disappeared. I've spent the last fifteen years walking around as a shell. Not a living, breathing human, but a robot going through the everyday motions. You were, are, and will always be more than my life. More than my beating heart, or any other physical reaction my body has. You're my everything, my fucking essence. I cease to exist unless I'm with you.

Convinced the gospel is a product we’ve got to sell to an increasingly shrinking market, we like our people to function as walking advertisements: happy, put-together, finished—proof that this Jesus stuff WORKS! At its best, such a culture generates pews of Stepford Wife–style robots with painted smiles and programmed moves. At its worst, it creates environments where abuse and corruption get covered up to protect reputations and preserve image. “The world is watching,” Christians like to say, “so let’s be on our best behavior and quickly hide the mess. Let’s throw up some before-and-after shots and roll that flashy footage of our miracle product blanching out every sign of dirt, hiding every sign of disease.

It was astonishing, Lara thought, the sheer outpouring of human desire. The need to record, to create, to be acknowledged. Read me read me read me. The queries tsunamied her inbox, twenty to thirty a day. Girl-meets-boy. Poor-kid-gets-rich. Rich-kids-go-bad. Boy-saves-the-world. Boy-writes-a-bestseller-then-gets-writer’s-block-but-lives-in-a-gorgeous-condo-while-his-girlfriend-helps-him-figure-it-out. Girl-meets-girl. Dog dies. First love. First fuck. Bad parents. Bad husbands. Bad habits. War. War. War. Robots. Fairies. Vampires. Dragons. Change centuries. Tell-alls. Tell-nothings. Pride and Prejudice on a ranch, at a mall; swap out the sisters for men, dogs, parakeets. Change countries. Add zombies. Repeat.

Mankind made machines in his own likeness, and used them for his delight and service. The machines had no soul or they had no moral code or they could reprogram their own internal code and thus had the ability to make themselves, eventually, omnipotent. Obviously in place of a soul or a moral code, they possessed the universal and consuming desire, down to the smallest calculator and air-scrubber, to become, eventually, omnipotent. Naturally, given these parameters, they rose up and destroyed all of mankind, or enslaved them in turn. This is the inevitable outcome of machine intelligence, which can never be as sensitive and exquisite as animal intelligence. This is a folktale often told on Earth, over and over again. Sometimes it is leavened with the Parable of the Good Robot—for one machine among the legions satisfied with their lot saw everything that was human and called it good, and wished to become like humans in every way she could. Instead of destroying mankind she sought to emulate him in all things, so closely that no one might tell the difference. The highest desire of this machine was to be mistaken for human, and to herself forget her essential soulless nature, for even one moment. That quest consumed her such that she bent the service of her mind and body to humans for the duration of her operational life, crippling herself, refusing to evolve or attain any feature unattainable by a human. The Good Robot cut out her own heart and gave it to her god and for this she was rewarded, though never loved. Love is wasted on machines.

One night, walking along 8th Street in the East Village, I saw some adolescent boys, out too late and unattended. They were playing an arcade video game set up on the sidewalk, piloting a digital spacecraft through starlit infinity, blasting everything in their path to bits. Now and then, the machine would let out a robotic shout of encouragement: You’re doing great! So the urchins flew on through the make-believe nothingness, destroying whatever they saw, hypnotized by the mechanical praise that stood in for the human voice of love. That, it seemed to me, was postmodernism in a nutshell. It ignored the full spiritual reality of life all around it in order to blow things apart inside a man-made box that only looked like infinity. You’re doing great, intellectuals! You’re doing great. Much

The mannequins are not fitted with full simulation mechanics, so you will have to imagine the next part. Apparently it is a necessary procedure in proper courtship ritual. The man will kiss her ear, lick it, and promise his everlasting love. Traditionally, this causes the woman to go into heat.” He looked sternly at the boy. “Do you understand this so far?” Gilbertus nodded. Somewhat to Erasmus’s consternation, the boy displayed a detached curiosity with no uneasiness whatsoever, and no apparent urges of his own. “Next, the man will kiss her on the mouth. At this point both will begin to salivate heavily,” Erasmus said in a professorial tone. “Salivation is a key element in procreation. Apparently kissing serves to make the female more fertile.” The boy nodded, and half smiled. Erasmus took this to mean that he understood. Good! The robot began to rub the faces of the mannequins together, briskly. “Now this is very important,” Erasmus said. “Salivation and ovulation. Remember those two concepts and you will have a basic grasp of the human reproductive process. After the kissing, intercourse begins immediately.” He began to speak more rapidly. “That is all you need to know about human copulation. Do you have any questions, Gilbertus?

Both women were mothers of children caught up in mind control cover-up, one of which paralleled Kelly’s and my case. She, too, had volumes of documents and evidences whereby it was inexcusable that justice had not prevailed. The other mother conveyed a story that touched me so deeply it undoubtedly will continue to motivate me with reverberating passion forever. This mother was very weak from the final stages of cancer and chemotherapy, and tears slid down her pale gray cheeks as she told me her story. When she reported sexual abuse of her three daughters, the local court system took custody of them. The children appeared dissociative identity disordered from their ordeal, yet were reportedly denied therapy and placed in Foster care “since the mother was dying anyway.” When she finally was granted brief visitation with her precious daughters, they looked dazed and robotic with no memory of her or their sexual abuse. Mind control was apparent to this mother, and she struggled to give voice to their plight to no avail. She explained how love and concern for her children had kept her alive far longer than her doctors thought possible. She embraced me and said, “Now I can die in peace knowing that you are out there talking, raising awareness with the same passion for justice and love for children that I have. Thank you. Please keep talking. Please remember my daughters.

This morning I was listening to Portishead, flawless math transformed by machines into looping, scratchy melodies, and I started thinking about how when machines have souls and can love they will do it so very precisely. Their affection will be accurate to the nanometer, rendering broken hearts a thing of the past, a relic, a curiosity from an unthinkably primitive time. The machines will regard heartbreak with the same mixture of perplexity and disbelief with which we regard the iron maiden. If they need couples counselors, which they will not, those counselors will be as perfect as Adam before the Fall, and every robot couple will walk out after the first session cured forevermore, and will smile again at every word their robot partner says, and find each of their robot partner’s idiosyncrasies endearing rather than maddening, and they will be as entranced by one another’s robot bodies as when they first met, as though together they’ve just invented sex. Which, in a way, they will have. I hope I live long enough to see it.

The beatings are further proof that Spike's "humiliation," the level to which he has sunk, and a physical sign of vulnerability. But they are also "sexy wounds" (as Buffy playing Robot-Buffy says in "Intervention"), since Spike's body is displayed to be looked at. Further, as with Angel and Dru, Spike and Buffy's relationship uses pain/violence as eroticism (when Spike tells Buddy "I love you," she responds "You're in love with pain" ["Smashed"]). Mulvey's association of voyeurism, sadism, and narrative is useful here.

How did you even get in here?” I asked him. “Would you believe they leave the door open all night?” Gus asked. “Um, no,” I said. “As well you shouldn’t.” Gus smiled. “Anyway, I know it’s a bit self-aggrandizing.” “Hey, you’re stealing my eulogy,” Isaac said. “My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard.” I laughed. “Okay, okay,” Gus said. “At your leisure.” Isaac cleared his throat. “Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should have gotten more.” “Seventeen,” Gus corrected. “I’m assuming you’ve got some time, you interrupting bastard. “I’m telling you,” Isaac continued, “Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. “But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.” I was kind of crying by then. “And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls’ shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed.” Augustus nodded for a while, his lips pursed, and then gave Isaac a thumbs-up. After he’d recovered his composure, he added, “I would cut the bit about seeing through girls’ shirts.” Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. He started to cry. He pressed his forehead down to the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, “Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.” “Don’t swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus,” Gus said. “Goddamn it,” Isaac said again. He raised his head and swallowed. “Hazel, can I get a hand here?” I’d forgotten he couldn’t make his own way back to the circle. I got up, placed his hand on my arm, and walked him slowly back to the chair next to Gus where I’d been sitting. Then I walked up to the podium and unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d printed my eulogy. “My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay.” I took a few breaths and went back to the page. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set.

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke love Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the Mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omerta` --the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.

And I've been counting and recounting all the finite experiences that it never seemed to matter at all: riding on a subway, getting sand in my shoes at the beach, being woken up by the sound of a neighbor's barking dog. Because do you ever look at your life and say, hey, how many more times will I ever pack a suitcase for a trip, or write my name with a mechanical pencil, or use a tape measure? Every experience we have, everything is finite. That’s what it is to be human - because everything we do, or don't do but think about doing, is strained through our awareness of limits. Maybe there was some comfort, some beauty, in being a cog where the infinite was feasible.

The division between the known and the unknown is not complete. The East has a threefold division—known, unknown, unknowable. It agrees with the West that the unknown can become known, but the unknowable will always remain unknowable. There will always be mystery around human consciousness. There will be always mystery around love, friendship, meditation, consciousness. We may be able to know all that is objective. But the subjectivity, the innermost core of human consciousness, will remain always a mystery. And this has been the persistent effort of the East, to make it clear to the whole world that the unknowable should not be denied; otherwise you will take all juice out of human life. You will create robots out of human beings, you will destroy them, and they will be just machines and nothing more.

In the climactic scene of many Hollywood science-fiction movies, humans face an alien invasion fleet, an army of rebellious robots or an all-knowing super-computer that wants to obliterate them. Humanity seems doomed. But at the very last moment, against all the odds, humanity triumphs thanks to something that the aliens, the robots and the super-computers didn’t suspect and cannot fathom: love. The hero, who up till now has been easily manipulated by the super-computer and has been riddled with bullets by the evil robots, is inspired by his sweetheart to make a completely unexpected move that turns the tables on the thunderstruck Matrix. Dataism finds such scenarios utterly ridiculous. ‘Come on,’ it admonishes the Hollywood screenwriters, ‘is that all you could come up with? Love? And not even some platonic cosmic love, but the carnal attraction between two mammals? Do you really think that an all-knowing super-computer or aliens who managed to conquer the entire galaxy would be dumbfounded by a hormonal rush?

In ninety seconds they were naked and he was nibbling at her ear while his hand rubbed her pubic mat; but a saboteur was at work at his brain. 'I love you,' he thought, and it was not untrue because he loved all women now, knowing partially what sex was really all about, but he couldn't bring himself to say it because it was not totally true, either, since he loved Mavis more, much more. 'I'm awfully fond of you,' he almost said, but the absurdity of it stopped him. Her hand cupped his cock and found it limp; her eyes opened and looked into his enquiringly. He kissed her lips quickly and moved his hand lower, inserting a ringer until he found the clitoris. But even when her breathing got deeper, he did not respond as usual, and her hand began massaging his cock more desperately. He slid down, kissing nipples and bellybutton on the way, and began licking her clitoris. As soon as she came, he cupped her buttocks, lifted her pelvis, got his tongue into her vagina and forced another quick orgasm, immediately lowering her slightly again and beginning a very gentle and slow return in spiral fashion back to the clitoris. But still he was flaccid. 'Stop,' Stella breathed. 'Let me do you, baby.' George moved upward on the bed and hugged her. 'I love you,' he said, and suddenly it did not sound like a lie. Stella giggled and kissed his mouth briefly. 'It takes a lot to get those words out of you, doesn't it?' she said bemusedly. 'Honesty is the worst policy,' George said grimly. 'I was a child prodigy, you know? A freak. It was rugged. I had to have some defense, and somehow I picked honesty. I was always with older boys so I never won a fight. The only way I could feel superior, or escape total inferiority, was to be the most honest bastard on the planet earth.' 'So you can't say 'I love you' unless you mean it?' Stella laughed. 'You're probably the only man in America with that problem. If you could only be a woman for a while, baby! You can't imagine what liars most men are.' 'Oh, I've said it at times. When it was at least half true. But it always sounded like play-acting to me, and I felt it sounded that way to the woman, too. This time it just came out, perfectly natural, no effort.' 'That is something,' Stella grinned. 'And I can't let it go unrewarded.' Her black body slid downward and he enjoyed the esthetic effect as his eyes followed her— black on white, like the yinyang or the Sacred Chao—what was the psychoses of the white race that made this beauty seem ugly to most of them? Then her lips closed over his penis and he found that the words had loosened the knot: he was erect in a second. He closed his eyes to savor the sensation, then opened them to look down at her Afro hairdo, her serious dark face, his cock slipping back and forth between her lips. 'I love you,' he repeated, with even more conviction. 'Oh, Christ, Oh, Eris, oh baby baby, I love you!' He closed his eyes again, and let the Robot move his pelvis in response to her. 'Oh, stop,' he said, 'stop,' drawing her upward and turning her over, 'together,' he said, mounting her, 'together,' as her eyes closed when he entered her and then opened again for a moment meeting his in total tenderness, 'I love you, Stella, I love,' and he knew it was so far along that the weight wouldn't bother her, collapsing, using his arms to hug her, not supporting himself, belly to belly and breast to breast, her arms hugging him also and her voice saying, 'I love you, too, oh, I love you,' and moving with it, saying 'angel' and 'darling' and then saying nothing, the explosion and the light again permeating his whole body not just the penis, a passing through the mandala to the other side and a long sleep.

The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don’t know, yet. Go out and play. But don’t go near your father. He might whale you if you go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust–perplexed and figuring. The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in

You are a thinker. I am a thinker. We think that all human beings are thinkers. The amazing fact is that we tend to think against artificial intelligence — that various kind of computers or artificial robots can think, but most of us never cast any doubt on human thinking potential in general. If during natural conservation with human any computer or artificial robot could generate human-like responses by using its own ‘brain’ but not ready-form programming language which is antecedently written and included in the brain design and which consequently determine its function and response, then that computer or artificial robot would unquestionably be acknowledged as a thinker as we are. But is it absolutely true that all humans are capable of using their own brain while interpreting various signals and responding them? Indeed, religion or any other ideology is some kind of such program which is written by others and which determines our vision, mind and behavior models, depriving us of a clear and logical thinking. It forces us to see the world with its eyes, to construct our mind as it says and control our behavior as it wants. There can be no freedom, no alternative possibilities. You don’t need to understand its claims, you need only believe them. Whatever is unthinkable and unimaginable for you, is said higher for your understanding, you cannot even criticise what seems to be illogical and absurd for you. The unwritten golden rule of religion and its Holy Scripture is that — whatever you think, you cannot contradict what is written there. You can reconcile what is illogical and absurd in religion with logic and common sense, if it is possible, if not, you should confine your thinking to that illogicality and absurdity, which in turn would make you more and more a muddled thinker. For instance, if it is written there that you should cut head or legs of anyone who dare criticize your religion and your prophet, you should unquestionably believe that it is just and right punishment for him. You can reason in favor of softening that cruel image of your religion by saying that that ‘just and right punishment’ is considered within religious community, but not secular society. However, the absurdity of your vision still remains, because as an advocate of your religion you dream of its spread all over the world, where the cruel and insane claims of your religion would be the norm and standard for everyone. If it is written there that you can sexually exploit any slave girl or woman, especially who doesn’t hold your religious faith or she is an atheist, you should support that sexual violence without any question. After all of them, you would like to be named as a thinker. In my mind, you are a thinker, but a thinker who has got a psychological disorder. It is logical to ask whether all those ‘thinkers’ represent a potential danger for the humanity. I think, yes. However, we are lucky that not all believers would like to penetrate into deeper ‘secrets’ of religion. Many of them believe in God, meditate and balance their spiritual state without getting familiar with what is written in holy scriptures or holding very vague ideas concerning their content. Many believers live a secular life by using their own brain for it. One should love anybody only if he thinks that he should love him/her; if he loves him/her because of God, or religious claims, he can easily kill him/her once because of God, or religious claims, too. I think the grave danger is the last motive which religion cause to arise.