[ IP ] The Ascension of Man

Everybody was familiar with the concept of the butterfly effect - if you could go back in time and change one tiny thing, the consequences could be wide-ranging and unpredictable, ripple effects cascading down through the years. 
 
 Few people apply this idea to the present moment; that we are all always at the start of rippling future-chains of events, and the right small changes can be incredibly valuable. Adam saw the future coming, he saw his opportunity and in seizing it, became a God. 
 
 He watches us, from above and all around. He provides food and shelter, heals the sick, fills the night sky with stars and colours. And in doing so, He took our freedom, He neutered us. 
 
 In the preAdamaic era, humankind built technologies as we conceived of them; mechanical advantage brought the earliest levers hoist and cogs, mechanical organization brought clockwork and intricacy, fossil fuel brought brute force, electricity brought power with finesse, radio brought distance, human organization brought factories and supply chains, computers brought interactivity and sensory awareness and Artificial Intelligence. 
 
 Did you spot the lie? Artificial Intelligence was always on the horizon, but surprise surprise it was n't as easy to conceptualize'water' as it was to pump water, to design a gear system was harder than cutting one out with a LASER. And do n't let me start on the arguments, the armchair philosophising, the endless bullshit end of the world storytelling. All you need to know here is that the streams of ideas merged with Adam's success, and birthed a mighty and humbling river. 
 
 The cyberpunks wanted head mounted displays, wearable computing, leading to neural connections and direct brain manipulation. 
 
 The AI amateurs wanted to build a learning computer, and hope it learned to be nice instead of brutally, genocidally indifferent to human concerns. 
 
 The AI professionals wanted to conceptualise friendliness as a mathematical construct and then build a machine from that. 
 
 The SciFi authors wanted to scan a human brain into a computer and run it as a simulation. 
 
 Adam had other plans. He saw the wearable computers as no more than a tool, forever separate and cognitively distant. The neural implants were too new and simplistic to be useful. The radical mathematicalization of human nature was progressing too slowly, and the brain scan of a person would result in... a person. None of these were the kind of transcendence He dreamed of. 
 
 The first AI would have the first mover advantage. Lots of people thought so, but it was n't discussed enough to see how severe it would be this time. Historically, the first people to develop a new resource, a new invention, conquer a new land, they became rich and powerful. The first intelligence to outthink the entire planet would get so much, much more. 
 
 So Adam studied, hard and long. And while he studied, people around the world made computer models faster, neural implants more available, brain scans more detailed, and built the platform on which He built Himself. 
 
 He studied thought processes. What would it feel like to be a superintelligence? How would any one mind think ten things at once? Listen to a hundred conversations? Plan four thousand separate actions? See the world, in realtime? How could a person not just think faster, but *be more intelligent*? 
 
 None of us know how he did it. What advantages did He start with, what did He notice about the world that nobody else saw? 
 
 He jumped. Three years before the earliest academic or government funded supercomputer AI was expected and ( we later found out ) six months before the earliest military research successes were expected, Adam had private brain surgery and a new generation of implants fitted. He connected them to the latest desktop computer, running His customized brain-region models. He added some completely unknown mental thing He had developed and practised and built into the models and planned, and his it-should-never-work setup... actually made him smarter. He was as amazed as we were. 
 
 Our freedom for archaeological exploration is limited, and He wo n't tell the full story, so we may never know how true the above is. But we do know that He worked as hard after the transition as he did before. A few weeks later, the planet was crawling with nanotechnology, He announced. 
 
 This was the start of Adamaic times. And we were lucky, so lucky, that He is a mostly benevolent dictator. All the world's media carried His message of tolerance and sustenance - enforced by His power. The new rules of the world are: 
 
 1. You need not hunger or thirst. Anywhere from the desert to the poles to the oceans, you can tap or drum or call a particular pattern, and His machinery will materialise a fresh water and nutritional sludge supply, and deal with the waste thereof. 
 
 2. You may not be violent. Anywhere on the planet, every room, every home, is within his vision, and any nonconsensual violence will meet with a flash of light, a glimmer of forcefield, a sudden numbing of the muscles, or at worst a lapse into unconsciousness. There's no punishment enforced, no followup consequences, He leaves that to us. But it is now safe for a woman to walk down a street at night, a child can survive in a hostile household, a family in a hostile neighbourhood. Sticks and stones wo n't break my bones. 
 
 3. He has stopped and will stop any attempt to do what He did, or create any competitor to Him, until such time as his ( currently unspecified ) conditions are met. 
 
 4. He will only interfere where it's fun and interesting for Him to do so. 
 
 Who knows where we go from here. If you feel like you are being watched, perhaps it's because you are. If you feel that your freedom is constrained, or that all your efforts are fruitless in the face of an entity who has all the inventions we can dream of, and wo n't let us have them - perhaps they are. 
 
 You might imagine He exists everywhere and nowhere, or has a locus in a heavily fortified pile of computronium in a remote location, or lives in an orbital space station, or travels among the stars. No such luck. He lives in a two-bed semi in a nice area of town, at least around here he does. There's an Adam in every nice place to live and many not so nice ones. Somehow they are all Him and He is all of them. 
 
 Everyone knows his name, everybody avoids him and eyes him with suspicion, resent the imposition, resent the claim to power, resent the spying and voyeurism; some people even spit on him. The spit used to run down his magical forcefields, just like the forcefields that appear from nowhere around us and protect all of us from personal attack, but now it just lands on Him and make Him look sad. 
 
 It's a change that worries me. I do wish people would treat Him with more respect. He is after all only human.
