zlacker

>>6mile+(OP)
I'm reminded of the quip that "mankind has already created life in their own likeness, and it's the computer virus"

>>zem+c9
Are you thinking of Agent Smith in the Matrix?

> I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

>>throwu+Ub
no, i remembered it being a quote from some famous scientist, and googling a bit now I see it was stephen hawking:

I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

>>zem+Kc
That’s fun! Looks like he said it at the 1994 Macworld Expo. I wonder if that inspired the Matrix quote a few years later.

>>throwu+Gd
perhaps, though also "humans are the plague" is a popular trope in science fiction. e.g. this one is from pratchett, in a conversation between rats in "the amazing maurice and his educated rodents":

You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use, said the voice of Spider.

'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'That's easy. It's called humanity.'