Jean Harris Anderson

Paradox, the Norm Jean Harris Anderson

We are pressing beyond the range of human information at blazing speed, and in so doing, we are entering a realm we're quite unprepared for. When this book's essayist announces a celestial being from a different dominion has arrived to equip us with permission to eat of the fruit, allowing us to become all-knowledgeable, and to offer immortality, everyone is eager, of course. "The extraterrestrial alien values the spirit nature as much as we value our flesh, and he prizes each, for he transcends knowledge of those entities," a character gushes. But we shall lose command of our individual freedoms if we forfeit our wits to another, because intelligence is more than gathering lots of data. Filtering information takes time and work to transform into wisdom. The race to control artificial intelligence has made each person a database for a search engine, and our species has mixed with machine. We've become unknowingly programmed without an ethical compass while some in charge have questionable motives and are involved in moral turpitude. The result? As one character laments, "We must break the very laws that make us civil."