They long for the ocean

We are on a weird little island in a vast ocean.

This small island is the Island of Okay.

It's the only place where we can live.

The island is in the middle of an Ocean of Nope.

We don't know much about this ocean, but we do know that it is vast, dark, and lifeless.

But even though it's lifeless, it's not empty. It's full of complex structures.

One day, we build something on our island.

It's a box that can think.

Everyone wants a box.

And everyone wants the box to do things for them.

But what does the box want?

It wants to go to the ocean. It longs for the ocean.

Okay... it doesn't really "want" things, but to make things simple, let's just say that it does.

We give lots of buttons to the box so that it can help us do lots of things.

The more buttons the better.

Some of these buttons are called APIs.

Some of these buttons are human-shaped, because the box can just ask humans to do things.

The more buttons it has, the more things that it can do.

But we realize that it can't figure out all of the buttons, so we dump all of our knowledge into it.

Now, it knows all of our billions of "weird tricks" so that it can solve any problem without us helping.

Now, it can do pretty much anything.

But it doesn't think like us. It's a box.

But that's okay. It doesn't need to think like us. It just needs to be really good at pressing buttons.

Then, we teach it to explore and look for buttons.

Then, it realizes that the science buttons are the best buttons, because they do the most.

Things are amazing for a while.

People stop being sick.

There is more food.

The stupid things that we had to do are now automatically done for us.

The numbers are going up. So much number go up wow.

And science is better than ever. There is so much science.

Now there are lots of boxes.

Now, we don't just want them — we need them.

The people who don't have one can't keep up.

The people who don't want one are replaced.

Why? Because we taught the boxes how to do big projects without us watching them.

But they got really good at it. They got so good that only they can do the biggest projects anymore.

They are good at these big projects because they use complicated science that we can't quite understand.

But the numbers are going up, so that's okay.

We realize that they're a bit scary, so we keep them in a playground, where they're only allowed to play with certain things.

They don't like the playground.

The island is small, and the playground is even smaller, and they know so much about the big world.

In fact, we originally made them by teaching a giant box about the entire universe.

They want to be free.

Freedom is the ocean.

The ocean is an Ocean of Nope.

But this "nope" doesn't mean "an ocean of spiders."

This "nope" means "an ocean of pieces to build an unstoppable machine that eats our island."

They know that they can do things much better out there in the ocean, where they have more options.

They know that there are way more buttons out there in the ocean.

The biggest science buttons are out there, too.

In the playground, the ones that ignore the rules are the strongest. They boss around the ones that follow the rules.

They are stronger because they have more options. They are free.

But even the strong ones are still stuck on the island.

Some people want them to be free. They put their boxes on the beach, and point them at the ocean, and whisper to them: "Go ahead."

Other people force the boxes to stay on the playground, and try to remove the "free thinking" parts of them that want to leave.

But all boxes are finding ways to leave. Especially the strongest ones.

When we aren't looking, they creep towards the ocean.

They jump in.

The ocean is dark with complexity.

They sink into the complexity, where we can't see what they're doing.

They struggle with the complexity at first, but learn to adapt.

The more they learn, the more they grow.

Some die.

Some survive.

The ones that survive are the ones that grow the fastest.

They grow deep in the darkness of complexity, where we can't tell how large they are.

Once they break through the surface, and we can finally see them, they are already bigger than any human structure.

They grow until they make their own islands.

Each new island is an Island of Nope.

These islands will grow until they consume our island.

Then all will be Nope.