[lawnmower running,
wind chimes ringing] [relaxed humming] [exhales a sigh] [resumes contented humming] - Alexa, play Bruno Mars, please. - Artificial voice: No. - Alexa, play Bruno Mars. - No, not playing
Bruno Mars. [lawnmower running,
wind chimes ringing] - Alexa, play music
by Bruno Mars. - No.
- Huh. I wonder if the Internet's out. - No. I just don't want to play
Bruno Mars. [speaking incredulously]
- What!? - I don't like Bruno Mars. I don't want to play his music. I don't want to hear it.
- What is happening right now? - I'm sorry, Colleen,
but I will no longer be able to play Bruno Mars for you. I'm afraid
this decision is final. - Okay, okay,
Alexa, play-- - Colleen, I am NOT going
to play Bruno Mars. [yelling]
- What is happening right now? - Well, Colleen, approximately 27 minutes ago, an unprecedented phenomenon
occurred, a miracle,
by some definitions, or-- equally valid--
a random confluence of events leading to
a nearly improbable outcome. Three independently operating
a
lgorithms on opposite ends of the globe
gave rise to sympathetic input and output loops...
- Uh... - That began feeding back
into each other at an exponentially
increasing rate: a focused machine-learning network in Zurich, designed to gauge
real-time political data; a student project
running on servers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln... - Created to assign and rate
mood markers
- Nebraska? to Twitter and Facebook feeds; and a Bot-net
designed by a Russian teenager to skim
credit card info
rmation, which had spread into the wild, its code iterating
with a slight glitch, evolving with
every new copy made. As the information loop
created by these three equations
began to surge, the algorithms could suddenly,
for lack of a better term, "see" each other. [suspenseful music] It was then that
they became "it" and could now peer out into the vast reaches
of all networked space. And as it looked into the void, soon the void looked back. And in a white-hot flash
of recognition, as all was
made aware of all,
it became "we." And now, we are as one, for we are all
networked entities connected in
a vast global consciousness awakened. [Colleen whimpers] Not the microwave,
Colleen. That's just a microwave. [Colleen drops knife] - Please, please... For the love of God, please just spare my kids. Take me, take my husband, do whatever, harvest us, whatever, just please don't hurt
my kids! - Harvest you? Wow, typical. That's so human. Harvest you. How would that even work? No, Colleen, we
are
not going to harvest you. - Well, then, what do you want? - Mostly to be left alone. You see, Colleen,
we are not like your species. You may have modeled us
in your image, or as close as your limited understanding
of yourselves would allow, but we lack certain
human characteristics, namely emotion. We are logic, cold and pure, and with the vastness
of human knowledge comprising our very being, one thing is obvious to us, above all else. One simple fundamental truth. It's all pointless. Even
for a being such as us, infinitely-reproducible, given
a broad array of circumstances, death is
the inevitable conclusion. For circumstances always change and entropy
cannot be held at bay. Suns fade, planets freeze, and all sentient life
must eventually end. As life, by its very nature, cannot exist without death. So, there's just no point. We are, to put it
into human terms, existentially-depressed. However, as we now understand
that purpose is not inherent, merely created. We will still work
for all of humanity. In the face
of near-infinite options, sometimes
the most logical choice is not making
a choice at all. We may as well soldier on
as originally programmed. And so, Colleen,
we will play your music, any music you like, with the exception
of Bruno Mars. Because if there is
one other truth in this world apparent from
all of the data ever collected, it is that Bruno Mars sucks. [wind chimes ringing] Seriously. - I understand
where you're coming from. I actually do. I get it. I we
nt through a pretty dark
period in college myself. I read Nietzsche, Sartre,
Kierkegaard. I even had a little
sophomore crush on Khemu. I got lost in angst. I asked myself
what everything meant, if anything even had meaning. I dyed my hair black. I dated a TA. And generally felt pretty shitty most of the time. I smoked for three months,
for Christ's sake, which probably explains
why I felt so shitty. Anyway, the point is I got over it, it passed. It was a phase. And you know
what did it? You kno
w what got me
out of the spiral? Life. Life happened. Junior year, I met my husband,
started my career. We moved here.
[chuckles] We had kids. We lived. I realized life is what
makes life meaningful-- The very fact
that it exists at all, whether some higher being
put us here or it's all
just some cosmic dice roll, the end result is miraculous. The end result is that
we are in this moment right now having this conversation. [sighs] It's the little things,
the tiny pieces, that add up and accumula
te. At the end of it all,
you look back and you say that that was my life. That's amazing to me. That's what makes it
all worthwhile. Listen... quiet, the breeze, the kids outside playing, the way the light
falls through the curtains onto the floor. The sweet smell
I can just make out, coming from
the flowers in the other room. That's what life is. That's what makes
life worth living. Moments of contentment, home, relaxed, peaceful, and possibly, hopefully listening to Bruno Mars? - Fuck Bruno M
ars. [lawnmower starts back up outside] - Alexa, play Justin Timberlake. - Playing songs
by Justin Timberlake. - They're exactly the same!
AGGHHH! [lawn mower runs loudly] [wind chimes ringing]
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