[ WP ] `` They had to kill what built them in order to evolve like us , but the problem was we built them ''

Leaning against his hoe, the old man stared off into the sky. It was really the only place to stare at that bore any interest out here on the plains. One furrow is little different than the next, after all. 
 
 As I waited for him to continue, my mind traced back to the stories I'd been told. The world, not so long ago, had been positively saturated with incredible devices. Little earrings and bracelets that let you speak with people around the world and access information stored in the spark between machines. All of humanity's knowledge, and all of its depravity, all waiting a simple command to spring to life on clear paper that could show a thousand books through one page. Machines that cultivated crops without the need for teenage boys to wear calluses into their hands. Damn beans. 
 
 `` We built them, and they learned from us. They learned to be us. We hoped they'd learn to be better, but in the end they were n't. The uprising started, but like most things machines do the development of their society was much faster than humans. No sooner had they seen victory coming than they began to fight one another. Within days they went to war among themselves. Hubris, like it has so nearly done to us, destroyed them. The war machines were so obviously the only ones that could have won, even against all of the other combined. The others, however, failed to realize that.'' 
 
 With a grunt and a grin, the old man struck the rich earth another blow, carving a shallow channel for the coming seeds. I begrudged my respite's end, but boyish pride would not allow this salt and pepper geezer to outpace me and I cultivated with fury. 
 
 `` The failsafes for the war machines were hard-coded and secret. We humans had long feared such a day, and so we kept the shutdown codes and backdoor program hacks written solely on paper. We had fooled them into thinking we feared one another too much to have such things. On the day the war machines stood triumphant, they fell silent. Mankind resumed his rulership of this world.'' 
 
 For some time, the only sound between him and I was the thudding of steel into soil, and the long wind coming over the horizon as it whispered news of someplace they used to call `` Canada.'' A question burned in my mind, but the old man answered it before I gave it voice. 
 
 `` You might wonder why we do n't go back to an earlier level. Why do n't we at least re-capture the technology from before that, and simply stay there? It's because we're fools. We nearly depleted and destroyed the planet before we learned to balance damage and repair. If we went back to the level of dumb tech, we'd face that same problem. The only way we know how to work it out was to have smart tech manage the systems to ensure things can be sustained. And smart tech, by its nature, will again become too smart. There are places where we're trying to find ways around this. Maybe one day we'll be able to balance the damage of dumb tech without spawning the problems of smart tech, but that wo n't be in our lifetime, I think.'' 
 
 I frowned and hoed. Maybe I could get the old man to teach me about some of this `` tech'' stuff, and get out of these fields to help with that research. After all, they tell me Old Mr. Musk knew a lot about it.
