Very few people are able to grasp the idea of a machine made up of "soft" human parts, let alone an intelligent machine.  At least in 2016, the prevalent mythology easily accepts the idea of "an" AI, a malicious but more or less human mind bent on enslaving or destroying humanity. Yet these same people obediently trudge off to meaningless labour for faceless corporations every day, always dimly aware that there is "purpose" behind what they do, but it's not their purpose. How is it possible that a machine (like an army) could have an "intelligence" separate from the people who make it up? My background in artificial intelligence makes the concept obvious and natural to me, but the vast majority of readers have not really given much thought about what "intelligence" means in general, let alone what it could mean when we are not speaking about a living thing. On the other hand, the idea that we are "assimilated" into "

Whatever problems are faced by human beings, they overcome them by sharing the burden with other human beings. We are all in this together. This is what it is to be human and this is why we are so easily assimilated into the machines that are the subject of this blog. If we solve the problems of life to by getting a "job" or joining the armed forces, we become a cog in a machine with a life of its own. Just as the cells in our bodies do well as long as they serve the purpose of the body, the human cogs are granted the necessities of life, to "thrive" within the constraints imposed upon them by the machine. But is there another way? We are *all* assimilated into culture and language at a very early age. This immediately constrains us to thrive within parameters set by a much larger group, largely without any conscious agenda or awareness of alternatives. We may say, however, that the group created by language and culture is not systematically opposed to the thriving

The world is being consumed in a battle between armies of the un-dead. These beings stalk around looking like human beings. They seem to be alive alive. They are not quite dead. Yet. In centuries to come, the world will be a poorer place. All the good things of life will have been sacrificed to the lusts of the un-dead. They will have taken our beautiful planet to the grave with them when they finally succumb to the inevitable and become truly and finally dead. In those times to come, the living will ask, by what right was their future robbed from them? We, the un-dead, will have no answer for them ...