I don't even have to stretch this one.

Well, I'm back. And frankly, I'm appalled at what I've found happening in my absence. Namely, this article. In a nutshell, if you're not into clicking links, scientists at the University of Sydney are trying to convince us that we should allow them to computerize our traffic patterns based on those used by ANTS: "When opposing streams of leafcutter ants share a narrow path, they instinctively alternate flows in the most efficient way possible. Studying how ants manage this could provide the basis for a system of driverless cars running on ant traffic algorithms."

Let's rehash that, shall we? The idea here is that, because ants are so much better at avoiding traffic jams (which I'm sure cost us X-billion amount of dollars in lost time at work for commuters every year, and blah blah blah and so on and so forth) than we are, we should mimic their instinctual, mindless behavior, and give up our hard-earned free will while driving to the whims and mathematical precision of a giant computer.

Ok. So, beyond how stupidly over-thought this plan is - since a train system run by a few humans carting around a whole lot MORE humans seems like a much easier and more feasible concept, which already has an infrastructure in place - does anyone else resent the idea of being carted around like ANTS? Not to downplay the achievements of the little guys, since ants really are pretty impressive creatures in their own right. They can lift however many zillion times their own body weight, they're super-organized, and some of them (see: Bullet Ants and Army Ants) are terrifying beyond most (or maybe all) mammal species.

But despite their impressiveness and organization and alien scare tactic powers, I think it's safe to say that humans have definitely won out in the evolution game. Yes, pinchers are all well and good, and apparently the mindless drone thing works really well for ants and bees and what not, but I'm gonna have to step back and say that the apposable thumb, bipedalism, higher intelligence, and free will have put us seriously ahead in the race to dominate the planet. We're doing a whole lot of things right by our very nature, which tends toward bull-headedness and rampant individualism. We are not naturally following each other around for the good of the colony. And say what you will for ant colonies, but I'd defend the idea that New York and Dubai and Paris and Tokyo are a little more impressive.

Not to say that ants are ding it all wrong. I certainly don't argue that a bit more of a collective conscientiousness (sp?) would be a good thing for humanity in general. After all, this whole climate change debacle and many of the other problems plaguing us in the modern world (postmodern world? let's not get into that debate now, shall we?) could be well served if we'd all think about the good of everyone and everything, rather than just ourselves on hot summer days and in our purchasing decisions. It's not that an ant-colony mindset would necessarily be bad in every possible way. But if we were to really emulate ants and live in colonies headed by a queen... well, in our case, a queen would be something like a Jabba the Hut figure endowed with all the persuasive powers of, say, Hitler in his prime, and the political power of a complete despot (no names are coming to me). Terrifying, right?

Now imagine that queen/ruler is... get ready... you guessed it! A goddamn robot! One that is wheeling us around at high speeds in little car-pods all hooked up to its collectively alien intelligence. I do hate to hold The Matrix up as some pinnacle of wisdom, but c'mon, people, how much more obvious does it get that robots are somewhere very high up in the scheming of our world these days? If you think this sounds kind of neat-o, kinda nifty, kinda cool... well, chew on this for a second: '"We essentially would have to hand over control of the vehicle to a collectively intelligent system that would move all vehicles from their source to destination," said Marcus Randall, a Bond University software mathematician.'

I don't even have to truss this one up to make it sound frightening - they are literally trying to let us make robots responsible for transporting us around. Mass transit is scary enough with a capable human being who it's safe to assume has our best interests at heart, but mass transit run by an artificial intelligence that HAS no heart? Based on an ANT brain? '"Drivers optimize their own travel time, without taking much care about others. This leads to phantom traffic jams which occur without any obvious reason. Ants, on the other hand, are not egoistic,"' says one scientist in favor of ant-braining our travel systems. But, you know, I'll stick to egoism, thankyouverymuch. It's what we cling to as human beings, and damned if we haven't climbed our way to the top using it as our grappling hook.

F-ing robots.