Mein Kraft

Minecraft is a gift from the gods, or at least a creation of those with the spark of God on earth. This fucking electronic world, man, it gets to me sometimes.

Nonetheless, I maintain that Minecraft is a gift from blessed creators, and I’m pretty sure I can prove that a Scandinavian kid named Notch was an entity who really existed, that he really made this game, and really sold it to Micro$hit for 4 billion or whatever. Or maybe that’s what Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney for, but who gives a fuck?

Don’t know why that’s important – the important thing is, the gods dropped a gift in our lap, and now it is our free will that will steer us through the epic godhood of our own universes, built block by block, until a god simply cannot build anymore.

Such is godhood in Minecraft.

There is something else that the game is doing for the minds and souls of digital gamers and navigators of the increasingly electronic earth. That is creating gap-fillers that will assist in the integration of humans and machine – the singularity that will change everything and combine our organic life and digital life inextricably.

But for now I must chop wood.

And build like no one has ever built before. Minecraft saved me. At work. With nothing to do. It plays well on an iPad, and can easily be switched to a ‘work mode’ application such as Pages, where I type this blog and look like I’m working when students and faculty suddenly walk in and interrupt my divine toil, generating existence and breathing of life into worlds of blocks.

It’s hilarious – I’ve been an amateur builder in that game for over a decade now. Meanwhile, some dude at Purdue is building the entire fucking campus. I always thought it would be cool just to replicate the Onion, or Purdue Memorial Union as the actual students call it. I once made the main stretch from the Grant St. entrance that goes past the Sweet Shop and the Arcade and realized with some regret – okay this is a pretty damn massive project. And promptly found another way to spend 300(000,000) hours of my life.

The singularity can’t happen soon enough. As my clock runs out in this mortal husk, it takes more and more energy to store more and more data – the memories pile up and I am loathe to erase them in the name of freeing up space. Processing power is being hampered by back pain and stress levels are threatening strikes in the medulla oblongata – those damn reds! Do not let their Unionizing message reach the amygdala, or we will have let something else take over – something dark, perhaps chemical will have stolen the mantle reserved for the Machine part of me that will organize, process, and put to use all the knowledge accumulated in this lifetime. Automate me so I can go back to playing Minecraft, living, and acquiring more knowledge and skills. Then automate that process so that I can learn ever more. Also, go ahead and automate my Minecraft game – build The Onion from my memory so I can use my leftover conscious brain to go play MOTHER 3 and learn how to cry again.

If Micronut$ offered to install Minecraft in my head so that I could further the cause of AI, I would say absolutely not, fuck you, you’re totally the wrong people to be developing that shit. If Notch offered to break me off a cool mil to do it, I’d probably pass on that, too. But you know what? I’d do it for Nintendo. Call me humanity’s most epic fandude and gameboy, but I just trust them and think a legacy like that would be dope.

It is a grand fantasy, though, is it not? Minecraft, the frog DNA in bridging the gaps between man and machine. Let this coupling extrapolate its potential and watch the feedback loop swirl.

A Timeline (subject to exponential and dimensional change)

Year XYZ

Singularity occurs. Human consciousness merges with digital processors and data storage for memory-based retrieval systems.

Year XYY

Audio-visual data processing reaches human levels of image and sound replication.

Year XXY

Dreams can be recorded and played back.

Year XXX

Dream audio-visual data processing reaches super-human levels of image and sound replication.

The first hack is into a person’s dreams, and basically the plot of Inception becomes reality.

Something needs to be done about dopamine and seratonin regulation in newly merged minds – some off-brands of combined consciousness accidentally create Terminal Man-style junkies, whose computers can’t get enough dope for their human half, then allow themselves to take over all processing functions.

Year VXX

The machines push for more control as human input is whittled down to base minimum levels, allowing the human mind to learn and enjoy all the pleasures of the world – video games, literature, music, language learning – all of it digital, but all of it real and once existing – well, everything except those dreams – allowing the human mind to play in hacked dreams was probably a mistake – on the machines’ part.

However, I finally have enough time to get good at Cuphead, and I have fun navigating noobs through Dark Souls in VR so realistic that I sometimes throw up.

Year VXV

There are now more people who have merged than have not – whether they know it or not. The payment systems in a digitally regulated democratic economy all but demand it because the calculations are ever changing based on actual supply and demand of 95% of all physical resources in the world. Anything sold in the open market is part of it, so only weapons and narcotics and endangered crap and stuff like that is not a part of this economy. The values fluctuate by billionths of a cent every second and are automated so that no one runs out of money and no places run out of resources.

Years VXW

Groups of humans break off to rebel against the machine integration, thinking that they are sacrificing too much of their humanity. Using hacked dreams as a back door, they steal both the plot of Inception AND the Matrix and… okay, now this is getting way too derivative.

For now, it is enough to chop my wood, build my world and mine my craft. Gods bless us gods, once and all (except for Micro$hit who can suck a Creeper’s dick).