While chasing this season, I happened to be watching Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control." What a coincidence, I think there are a lot of episodes in the show that seem to pay homage to this book.
For example, the beehive that appears many times in the play, including the iconic symbol of the mysterious project, and Elsie's statement that it looks like a beehive when she enters the mother's hive. The hive in "Out of Control" represents a bottom-up organization like a bee colony and an ant colony, a highly efficient decentralized organization composed of thousands of single-skilled members.
Humans have always proudly believed that only themselves are conscious, and robots can only act according to programs, but what is consciousness? It is written in the book that consciousness is probably just a flow of information that emerges from the process of brain cells communicating with each other. It seems to have a tight order, but it is actually not so controlled. For example, the movements of birds in the sky are neat and uniform. After receiving a unified command, it may actually just be that one bird suddenly turned and other birds followed. If this is the case, then how advanced is the human consciousness than the thinking formed by the robot with the circuit?
Another example is that the "codes" of all the tourists in the last episode are actually stored in paper books, which is reminiscent of Borges' library mentioned in "Out of Control". It is a metaphor for all possible life forms, and the forms required for evolution are also included. Learning and evolution are important topics discussed in the book, and they are precisely the weapons for these robots in Westworld. Evolution is not an overnight process. It requires many generations of efforts. As long as a robot retains its original memory and its body can be repaired, it can complete the evolution that other creatures need many generations to complete.
The book "Out of Control" predicted more than a decade ago that humans will coexist with robots in the future, and even because robots have many advantages that humans do not have, it is very likely that they will dominate our lives. Today, whether watching the drama or focusing on reality, this prophecy has gradually come true.
Although human beings no longer have absolute superiority, they are still irreplaceable. I think the preciousness of human beings is precisely in their fragility. Robots can be immortal, but humans cannot. This physical limitation determines that human strategies must be different from robots, which may be reflected in more shortsightedness and selfishness, or in the emphasis on personal feelings. This is probably the biggest difference between real people and robots.
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