Ernest Cline Quotes

Our culture already has a number of well known stories about artificial life and non-human intelligence. In 'Exegesis,' I've tried to not only tell a new and engaging story but also to comment on those well known stories through the details of my novel.

I like to think / it has to be!) / of a cybernetic ecology / where we are free of our labors / and joined back to nature, / returned to our mammal / brothers and sisters, / and all watched over / by machines of loving grace.

I love stories like 'The Terminator' movies and 'The Matrix,' where our machines become self-aware and turn on us.

Terminator' is a reflection of how the world is changing.

At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.

We are still fearful, superstitious and all-too-human creatures. At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

We build our technologies as a way of addressing all our anxieties and desires. They are our passions congealed into these prosthetic extensions of ourselves. And they do it in a way that reflects what we dream ourselves capable of doing.

Ultimately, I hypothesize that technology will one day be able to recreate a realistic representation of us as a result of the plethora of content we're creating converging with other advances in machine learning, robotics and large-scale data mining.

So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction.

I grew up with the idea of the cyborg and the robot, but at the same time I felt this intense disconnection between the things I was engaged with and inspired by in terms of fun and play. It seemed like paintings and drawings were so static.

We're fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves.

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see that in a lot of science fiction. But the machines we're creating are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our own reach.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

The Cube is an imitation of life itself - or even an improvement on life.

The digitization of human beings will make a parody out of 'doctor knows best.'

As far as what is the line between human and machine? That's a great question.

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

I see technology as being an extension of the human body.

I can't imagine that life can be replaced with a computer universe. I can't accept it.

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.

I think that the development of artificial intelligence could lead to the end of the human race.

Ultimately, it's not going to be about man versus machine. It is going to be about man with machines.

I think the 'Terminator' idea is a reasonable one - that is that one day the Internet becomes self-aware and simply says that humans are in the way. After all, if you meet an ant hill and you're making a 10-lane super highway, you just pave over the ants. It's not that you don't like the ants, it's not that you hate ants; they are just in the way.