Nukem

Here's the deal:

In the near future, most people will not even have a home computer. The towers and even laptops we know and love will become obsolete.

The people that do keep computers will be the ones that need powerful machines in businesses... everyone else will have iPhone-like (and later tricorder-like) devices.

But even the ones that keep their Mac Pro-like extremely powerful consumer-level computing devices will eventually get rid of theirs also. You don't need to OWN a computer now... With the whole world "plugged in" wirelessly, at the speed of light, to their devices like this, you can just RENT computing power from company servers. No matter what work you do, the screen in your hand (available in many sizes) will merely function as a touch-screen display... the picture that you are editing (or whatever work you do) will actually be stored and manipulated on a mass server in New Mexico or something.

There is no need to keep around these huge, bulky computers and hard drives. You just either need an iPhone (that is connected at the speed of light to every other machine in the world and all of the known INFORMATION in the world) or a little larger 17" super-light touch-screen tablet to help you use your hands to edit your photos/videos/audio and of course, play games!

Past Duke Nukem?

By this time, serious gaming will go the way it's been going toward already... to VIRTUAL REALITY. Of course! This is what gaming is all about! First, you will be able to wear very lightweight glasses and motion anything you want to do.

A little later, you will be able to simply THINK about what you want to do, and the computer (and an electrode to your brain) will do it. Of course, by now there will be some of the most powerful machines ever creating the most life-like holograms ever experienced. And by the way, the need for prostitution will almost be negated, as men (or women) can simply make a stop at the nearest sex simulator store (and it will be cheap).

Actually, any game will be able to be played in a 'holodeck' room... imagine the excitement of the already popular first person shooter games, when you really are actually running around and ducking around corners to blow the bad guys brains out...

Finally, a few years later, we will have the ability to PROJECT images straight into the vision-controlling part of the brain. Users will LITERALLY (and virtually, when you think about it :) be plugged in. But why stop there? you could take the headphones off of your ears and plug an electrode into your brain's hearing center. Hell! Why don't we just throw in the ability to mentally simulate smell, taste, and touch!

Now, all it takes is a little slip in underestimating the intelligence of our computers, and we become a Matrix-like civilization of towers of incubated and coma'd humans, all using our brains at their maximum potential, living our lives 'in the matrix' for the benefit and survival of the machines.

Woah... wait a minute!

Unlike the very gruesome 'real life' Matrix scenario... if we were allowed to remain THIS connected, without being CONTROLLED by the machines... if we could be THIS plugged in and still know that we are human and are in the 'real world', (assuming I am in the real world as I write this and assuming that we win the machine war) we would truly be a species with a COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS.

We could now, literally, communicate through TELEPATHY... sending information from one brain to the next, wirelessly... and at the speed of light... (Technology really is MAGIC, isn't it?) Our existence as humans would become all about the power of our minds...

Man vs. Nature

If you use TECHNOLOGY to achieve this higher collective consciousness, it will be a messy process (and there is a good chance that technology and the machines will eventually take over humans, just like the sci-fi novels).

If only the NATURAL world contained the system to do all of this, we wouldn't have to take these hundreds and thousands of years to technologically advance to the level of this kind of higher thinking happening.

What If?

What if the EARTH were allowing us to use ITSELF as our NETWORK ? what if it provided us with consciousness enhancing chemicals that specifically react with our human brains to think at a higher level, or allow both hemispheres of the brain to communicated at the same time, and actually trigger a mode of MUCH HIGHER thinking?

The species would totally evolve, eventually, out of our bodies and into pure energy.

What if those in power found out which naturally growing bio-chemicals produce these kinds of effects?

What if they made them ILLEGAL? (Bastards!)

And while we're at it...What if they encouraged the use of alcohol, a most definite consciousness DEGRADER (It makes you dumber!), in humans INSTEAD of encouraging certain plants and bio-chemicals that are consciousness ENHANCING?

If the people in power already did that, they could...

SHIT!

they could create a civilization of people that do not think as much

And now it gets scary...

Over time, people will use less and less of their brains.

Now, the people in power would need a way to keep people from thinking creatively. I suppose they could create a system of uncontrollable DEBT and a system of working your ass off (instead of thinking creatively) just to keep your family from living on the street.

Maybe the ones in power could even create places for the ALREADY weak minded, to work and pay off his debt. The system would have to be simple. Simple tasks, with utmost consistency and OBEDIENCE.

Now, if only the people in power could keep people from thinking creatively when they are in their HOMES.

ENTER: TELEVISION

you get my drift there... and it is undeniably happening already, and will continue to grow more intense and more powerful, and more addicting than ever...

What if you could brainwash a nation, hell, a WORLD of human beings into one of non-thinkers that could support your survival and your PROFIT???

Final Thought

It doesn't look good for us humans... either groups of PEOPLE (governments, businesses, and media) are going to take us over, or the machines are... and if it all goes on long enough, it might be the humans first, and then the machines last(unless there is Messianic Neo character to defeat the machines :)

Well, even if we lack the POWER to stop this all from happening, (and lack the energy and motivation to get off of our asses to start a revolution) at least us CONSCIOUSNESS-ENHANCED folks know what's coming...