alanbwt on Nostr: “There is the sense that somehow or other, at some time, there was a fall, a point ...

“There is the sense that somehow or other, at some time, there was a fall, a point at which we became unnatural.

There’s a great deal of worry going on about this now because of the rise of the computer. You know this? This is terribly interesting. That a new form of intelligence, you see, has come into the world, which is, in certain directions, vastly superior to human intelligence.

And people are beginning to worry like anything about whether the machines are going to take us over. But we've got to realize that machines aren’t... See, machine is becoming a dirty word. Just a machine. Mere machinery. You see? But actually, there has grown out of us, through these things, enormous electronic circuits that are new forms of life.

And these are all connected with us. They're not separate from us. They're not something like a different order of beings that might come from some other planet and conquer us. The whole development of the electronic minds and brains that we have are new cortexes.”

— Alan Watts, Four Ways to the Center