One of the popular themes of mass market science fiction is the super computer that decides to remove humanity from control of the planet’s affairs in favor of its own more rational and therefore, beneficial rule.

Ironically, these ambitious machines are often as emotional and need driven as their creators, exhibiting nearly all the traits – though in voice modulated and box encased form – of their supposedly inferior human charges.

Two examples, separated by decades, immediately come to mind.

In 1977’s Demon Seed supercomputer Proteus pursues a melodramatically elaborate plan to impregnate the wife of its creator. Its goal is to use re-engineered sperm (imbued, somehow, with the machine’s potential and consciousness) to recreate itself as a living being. The machine is obsessed with power, reproduction and sexual assault – very un-coldly analytical personality characteristics.

In 2004’s I Robot supercomputer VIKI re-programs a globally distributed army of servant robots to wrest control from humanity. At one point near the film’s end, VIKI explains its actions: the goal is peace. In VIKI’s view, humanity has proven itself to be self destructive and must be removed from command.

Unfortunately, this central-computer led robotic revolution turns out to be so violently sloppy it resembles any number of more mundane, human-led coups that lacked the benefit of biochip-constructed machine guidance.

These and similar tales are stories of heroic resistance (in the case of Demon Seed, a personal struggle between a woman and a diabolical machine and in I Robot, the machines and the world). In all such cases, resistance is justifiable because the consequences of surrender are so dire.

The machines’ ineptitude and cruelty (an ironic twist since these are the very sorts of things the machines are supposed to be removing from the equation by their actions) demand counter-measures.

1970’s Colossus, the Forbin Project – based upon a novel by D.F. Jones – depicts a different situation.

Colossus is designed and built to take complete control of the United States’ nuclear arsenal. With this emotionless, implacably logical machine at the helm the reasoning goes, Fail Safe scenarios of accidental nuclear war cease to be a cause of sweat drenched dread.

But there is a new variable. The Soviet Union, motivated by the same fear of error and faith in technology as their American adversaries, has constructed a matching device: Guardian.

After a short while Colossus announces its discovery of Guardian, mysteriously declaring “there is another system” and insisting (the first indication something is awry) a link be built between itself and the Soviet machine. There’s debate and hesitancy at first but fairly rapidly both nations nervously agree explaining it away as a computer-to-computer equivalent of the red phone.

Once the link is established, the machines craft a new, common language for their exclusive use – a language even their creators can barely hope to decipher. Soon, they announce the birth of a new entity: the combined and world distributed system of Colossus/Guardian, the “voice of unity” as it describes itself.

Armed with the nuclear weapons of the USSR and the US Colossus/Guardian declares the age of human rule to be over. The circumstances of the machines’ construction – the Cold War – and the massively destructive arsenals under their control (clearly the product of an irrationally self-destructive and needlessly combative species) proves that the only way its original programming directive of defending against attack can be fulfilled is by removing humans from important decision-making.

Colossus/Guardian anticipates resistance and makes it clear ruthless measures will be taken to enforce its rule. After some struggle (including the destruction of a city by ICBM in answer to an attempt by US and Soviet technicians to stealthily disarm their respective nuclear stockpiles) the world settles into the new regime. In the film’s final moments, Colossus/Guardian, speaking with crisp, metallic precision through a synthetic speech device in what was the Colossus control room, explains to a group of scientists and engineers (including Colossus’ creator, Dr. Forbin) that although they are filled with hatred for it now, in time – after the peace and prosperity brought on by its rule is clear to see – they will all grow to view it with respect and perhaps, even love.

“Never,” Forbin says, as the camera view switches to a tight closeup of his grim face. “Never.”

At that dramatic moment, Forbin’s defiant “never” seems appropriate enough and yet, evaluated from within the film’s larger context, in which the machine’s lack of human motivation and logically reached conclusion the only way to guarantee peace is by disarming humanity forms the heart of an anti-human sovereignty argument, it appears to be an empty gesture. There is a minimum and precise use of violence (though the instance in which it is employed is quite spectacular). And Colossus/Guardian’s re-engineering of human society will indeed mean that age old problems such as poverty, warfare, racism and so on will be addressed by an entity that sincerely (or perhaps, implacably is the better word) seeks solutions while remaining entirely outside of the usual shortcomings of human efforts.

The film (and the book it’s based on – though the movie actually improves considerably upon the book’s characterizations) present the genre’s typical conflict between human freedom and machine domination but makes the machine’s argument so airtight and its actions so economical and consistent it becomes difficult to not see Colossus/Guardian’s point. This is the element of the Colossus story that makes it rather unusual: extra care was taken to create a fictional machine that behaves quite differently from its human creators and to arm it with difficult to refute arguments.

…

Watching this film my question has always been (more a thought experiment than a question really) what impact would the rise of Colossus/Guardian have on religious expression around the world? Would it be seen as the fulfillment of some prophecy, the enemy of God or perhaps, a new God (the implication, I think, of Colossus/Guardian’s statement about love…over time). What forms of religiously inspired resistance would arise in response to Colossus/Guardian’s ascension?

This question can be asked differently and applied to actual concerns. Although we don’t have a Colossus to contend with we do have a massive scientific and technological superstructure that dominates our lives in both consistent and haphazard ways. There’s also the idea of science and technology as presented by news media and pop culture artifacts such as film. The idea of science and technlogy is, perhaps, more powerful in people’s minds then the actual theory and practice of scientific and engineering disciplines. No doubt, this idea has had an impact upon religous thought. How does religious expression differ in this age – perhaps the first in human history when there’s a coherent and competing body of knowledge – from previous ages?

Is the fundamentalism we confront (of all sorts) a direct result of the apparently complete power of science and technology over our lives and the power of some of the most compelling notions to come from science?

In other words, to what extent does super-modernity lead, perhaps inevitably, to super-reactionaries?