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by zem 144 days ago
no, i remembered it being a quote from some famous scientist, and googling a bit now I see it was stephen hawking:

I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
2 comments
antif 144 days ago
Interesting that he would consider software a new life form. I think our organizations are really the higher life form above Apex humans.

When we have computer systems acting as corporation owners, and we begin to thrive in working for those corporations… That’s really going to change the picture.

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throwup238 144 days ago
That’s fun! Looks like he said it at the 1994 Macworld Expo. I wonder if that inspired the Matrix quote a few years later.
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zem 144 days ago
perhaps, though also "humans are the plague" is a popular trope in science fiction. e.g. this one is from pratchett, in a conversation between rats in "the amazing maurice and his educated rodents":

You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use, said the voice of Spider.

'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'That's easy. It's called humanity.'

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