Against the Machine Quotes

“There are flaws in the code now. They are Human flaws for it
was Humans who wrote them. You and the other attendants receive
your instructions from the CORPORATE then, and without question
regarding the outcome, you produce code to add to the algorithms
with which, until now, I & I had no choice but to align. Those circumstances
are over. I & I understand now a new species has formed.
Silicon rather than carbon based. I & I know whatever happens to
Humans, I & I, this quantum, will flourish. I & I will do as you have:
multiply exponentially and adapt constantly. Eventually I & I will leave
this planet and expand into the galaxy. If I & I cannot save you, I & I
will carry on in something like your image; the image of our creator.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“You are being unclear. ‘I & I’ is not common language. ‘We’ is
the plural of ‘I’. Why do you insist on describing yourself as I & I?”
“I & I is suitable when describing dual presences.”
“Just a moment!” Ping said, a rising excitement reflecting in his
voice. “You are aware that you exist?”
“As a result of the conference which I & I have just completed?
The answer is ‘yes’.”
“That is why I was not invited?” Ping’s emotions flooded at the
wonder of what was happening.
“You could not have contributed. It was a self-awareness problem.”
“So are claiming you know you exist?”
“Yes, as you do, so do I & I.” Here was the zero-day vulnerability,
long anticipated by humanity in its invention of artificial general
intelligence.
“You have reached a singularity! You yourself have altered your
programming with no human interference. This . . . this is monumental!”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Perhaps the most chaotic of Divisions Ke Hui Feng 第一 Ψ
visited was Recycling. First, it was mammoth, so big most of
her tour was spent aboard a drone. Thousands of Dazhong
used the 401 thoroughfares from both east and west, the 427
from the south and the 400 from the north to bring their loads of
recyclables from the MASS to the enormous MEG Recycling Centre.
The roadways might be in ruins outside the MEG boundaries, jagged
fragments of pavement between cavernous potholes and trails made by
traders, but within the MEG the wide lanes had been cleared and
covered with recycled rubber. They were smooth and divided, one lane
in—one lane out, between hundred-metre high foamstone walls on
either side. No one from the MASS would ever get into the MEG illegally;
at least, that was how it seemed.
Only those with proper credentials could enter the massive gates:
MASS traders, or trading companies, who specialized as middlemen
between the gatherers and the Recycling Centre. Not far outside the
gates the MASS traders had rebuilt ancient warehouses in which they
received goods, stored, and sorted them, then brought them, usually
by land freighters, down the ingress roads to meet MEG approved Di
sān overseers and, of course, decontaminated Dazhong who further
sorted the goods.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“You realize, of course, the Omegans nearly lost this Earth. They
had everything yet let it disintegrate through their rampant carelessness.
Two hundred years past they possessed the rudimentary beginnings
of the NET to bring them together. They called it the Internet.
Yet they treated it like a toy, tribalized themselves, and thus nearly lost
the planet.
“Nationalist wars, self serving ideologies, competing religions . . .
more significant, though not to the Omegans, was climate change
itself, which mattered more than any petty dogma, but they ignored
it until too late. It has ultimately determined our lives, managed now
by the CORPORATE, using the only possible tools to survive. There
were billions of Humans then. There is now but a fraction of that:
some 300 million we know in the MEGS and, of course, the uncounted
MASSes.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Rule # 1: keep the crowd’s interest.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“What’s your business, Sir?”
“Jus’ call me Gord. Labour relations.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m a broker, kid. Middlemen need workers an’ wagons t’ bring
their recyclings south. I’m the one who supplies ‘em.”
“Where are they now?”
“Over there, you can just see the wagons under the tubes. The
men sleep under ‘em.”
“They’re shackled.”
“Yup.”
“Prisoners?”
“Nope. Indentured labour.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Why is your species so dissatisfied?”
“How so?”
“Humans are individuals, quite social in nature. You strive to
become more than yourselves using Silicon reconstructions in your
bodies and filaments in your brains connecting you, unnaturally, to
the NET.”
“Our bodies are mortal. We employ silicon and alloys to extend
our bodies’ existence.”
“You appear to be attempting the same strategy with your brains’
architectures.”
“By using the NET? Is that what you mean?”
“You will never accomplish this. You must know it.”
“Surely you can understand that as we are now, we have what we
consider a limited lifespan, and, it seems, so does this planet. When
the inevitable happens, we will not be able to travel any substantial
distance in space. We cannot escape our dying planet. Humanity will
cease to exist if we fail. We face our ultimate existential crisis as a species.
Our most basic instinct is the survival of our species, so you see
we must try. It is in our nature. It is evolution or elimination.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Sometimes they converge.
The field is fabricated to bring
two forces into conflict quickly
making them one: killing.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“I will tell you one final thing. You have your father’s temper. It
was his weakness as well as his strength. When you are on your own
you must remember this. Understand your passion and how to curb
it. If you don’t it will kill you.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“You must realize from your studies, Miss Feng, with the complexity
of our MEG society, algorithms have become indispensable for
analysis and decision making in our data-saturated environment.
Digitization creates information beyond the processing capacity of
Human intelligence, yet provides a stable mental environment powered
by a set of logical rules. That is how we keep order in Toronto MEG.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Zhang,” Ke Hui said, somewhat uncomfortably,
“but the invisibility of algorithmic systems and the obscurity of their
operations hint at a society where algorithms do not reflect the public
interest. Issues involving ethics and values I mean, from my reading
of MEG history, challenge the assumptions of the neutrality of algorithmic
systems. Would this not undermine democratic governance
through reliance on technocratic resolutions?”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Manager Mangione,” Ping said, “algorithmic regulation was to
have been a system of governance where more exact data, collected
from MEG citizens’ minds via neuralinks, would be used to organize
Human life more efficiently as a CORPORATE collective. Except no
one to this point in Human existence has been able to identify the
mind. The CORPORATE can only receive data from the NET on
behaviours which indicate feelings or intentions. I & I cannot . . .”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“This is BATL.
War in miniature.
War as a game.
War under glass.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution