Today, I am going to go a bit left-field and bring something to the community that in fact is a fusion of some of the things that I have some interest in - and before you say anything I know I could easily have cited 2001: A Space Odyssey or even I Robot (even before the film came out), but it is my blog and my post and so therefore I am going to present the topic in my own unique way and it is not a coincidence that I have just spent a couple of days focused on a particular theme.

The fusion I am talking about is, of course, my love of Heavy Metal and discussion around Artificial Intelligence.

I would therefore like to bring to you the relatively unknown Computer God from the Black Sabbath album Dehumaniser. Black Sabbath had ungone a number of transformations since firing Ozzy Osbourne, and that just left Tony Iommi very much carrying the name and the band's legacy. Then in 1992 they returned to their second incarnation with Ronnie James Dio on vocals (you may have noticed that I love that guy!) and while they didn't last long they did put out Dehumaniser. Within a year they imploded again because Dio refused to share a platform with Ozzy who had been invited to do an encore. Dio promptly quit the band and Rob Halford (Judas Priest) helped fulfill the incomplete tour dates (kudos to him!)

Later this incarnation of Black Sabbath reformed and back in 2007 I was able to see them under the label Heaven and Hell, named after the title of their first album with Dio.

Ronnie James Dio was known for his voice and his ability to evoke fantasy, dragons and magic in his lyrics, probably best epitomised by the massively epic Stargazer which we looked at yesterday, but also amply demonstrated by the whole Magica Album, Sacred Heart (the song) and some of his other Sabbath stuff.

So, bearing in mind Dio's tendency to weave fantasy at every juncture, let's get into Computer God...

Waiting for the revolution
Nuclear vision, genocide
Computerize God, it's the new religion
Program the brain, not the heartbeat

He is already laying out a vision or augmentation, a time of power and enhanced intelligence and the death of compassion and maybe even life.

Onward, all you crystal soldiers
Touch tomorrow energize
Digital dreams and you're the next correction
Man's a mistake, so we'll fix it, yeah

This has touches of I Robot (spoiler alert following) in which the novel concludes that the best way for robots to obey Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics listed here - 

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

- is to effectively coddle us in what is in effect concentration camps, so we cannot cause harm to ourselves or others - "Man's a mistake..." - "the next correction.

Take a look at your own reflection
Right before your eyes, it turns to steel

There's another side of heaven
This way to technical paradise
Find it on the other side
When the walls fall down

Love is automatic pleasure
Virtual reality
Terminal hate, it's a calculation
Send in the child for connection

There is little need to comment on this section, but I will anyway. Where there is light there is always shadow - "There's another side of Heaven" - and in the last verse of this part the necessity of everybody to be connected and for that connection to cause splintering and hate - think social media and how their algorithms work; they learn from the number of seconds we spend on something. Sounds benign, until we realise that this also concerns extreme content which results in the radicalisation of those who are watching.

Take a look at the toys around you
Right before your eyes, the toys are real

There's another side of heaven
This way to technical paradise
Find it on the other side
When the walls fall down

The latter part is a repetition with it being a song and it adds to structure and we can imagine what the toys are - in fact when trying to think about specific examples I couldn't because basically it seems that almost anything and everything is possible.

Midnight confessions
Never heal the soul
What you believe is fantasy
Your past is your future
Left behind, lost in time
Will you surrender?

This part of the song slows right down and for me it is about trying to reach deep inside and find ourselves again. Past and future are confused we simply are and reality is blurred - "What you believe is fantasy". We are looking for connection - human connect that is, not technical connection.

Waiting for the revolution
Program the brain, not the heartbeat

This reprises the opening tenet of the song and brings the guitar solo in, before the song draws us to a damning conclusion.

Deliver us to evil, deny us of our faith
Robotic hearts bleed poison on the world we populate
Virtual existence with a superhuman mind
The ultimate creation, destroyer of mankind

This part of the song defines this vision as evil and the lost of free will - "deny us of our faith" (this is the right and freedom to believe what we want and I believe it is much wider than a narrow religious definition). Loss of conscience and morality will "bleed poison on the world" as we become virtual  - maybe not full on Matrix - and the "superhuman mind" takes over and as the ultimate creation we have sown the seeds for our own destruction. Another reading of this could be explained in Homo Deux (written by Yuval Noah Harari) - a possible future where some ("the haves") will be augmented and the rest of us ("the don't haves") will be left behind.

Termination of our youth
For we do not compute
No!

And finally there is an appeal to us - and especially our young people who are buying this doomsday vision - to reject this technology that represents a very real threat to our existence and future.

And here it is, performed live, in the Heaven and Hell incarnation...

Ok, it might be a bit extreme and it is (only) a song from a guy known for his fantastically visions, but somehow it resonates with a possible future and it is only fitting to leave the final word to the great man himself:

It's all about the world we live in... wrote that a long time ago... suddenly it's all kinda come true.  

As always stay safe and well my friends.