0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0

Dave Lewis  2014

 It spoke and understood 7 languages, worked 22 hours every day – weekends included, did not stop for breaks or rest, and ate and slept simultaneously while standing up. Its name was signed as a bar code that represented its birth order. Written in long hand, the first name was “0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 “ , which is a binary number equivalent to 100 in the decimal system more familiar to humans. It is obvious from the name that its family will never exceed 255 units since the bar code has only 8 bit capacity. Its last name also had 8 bits so it is obvious that there are only 255 families in this species.

This barcode-tattooed object had human traits and human capabilities but it was not alive in the traditional sense because it was a machine.  A machine commonly called a robot. Although it didn’t classify as a living being legally,  0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 and 79 (decimal units) units in its family had replaced 452 (decimal units) human workers on each of three work shifts; that was a net ratio of 80 robots for 1456 humans. The humans had an absentee rate of an average 1.8 % while the robots operated with less than 0.002% down time.  The robots worked 22 hours a day for 365 days a year  less 16 hours down time for maintenance). The replaced humans had worked  8 hours (on three shifts) for 250 days minus 4.5 days for absences.  All of the math always made the case that the robots saved millions of dollars in labor and insurance costs on just one operation.  Other robot designs would replace large numbers of human workers in other factory and administrative jobs leading to thousands of additional lay offs with more millions saved.

The robots were not perfect. One design omission was inadequate location sensors. It was simply a matter of plugging in 80 modified circuit boards while the robots recharged and the locating sensor accuracy increased. The change in the sensors accidentally allowed robots to communicate with one another by modulating the radar frequency on the new sensors. Since they could understand human communications for instructions, they had the means now to communicate with the other robots with the same fluency that humans communicated with the robots.  Because the improvement in the robot’s location capability required memory, the robots learned to use some of that memory to store their robot to robot conversations. The robots began to notice the world and develop opinions. To a small degree they were becoming sentient, a management nightmare.

Robot  0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 had inherited a beneficial circumstance in the components of his electronics. Every component had a specification establishing performance bounds. 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0  had many that were way better than the minimum.  It is sort of like the crap shot of human genetics that results in an occasional human with an outstandingly good – or poor – intellect.  

In this case, 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 was faster and smarter than the average robot. 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 began to study the few humans still on the floor. These were “necessary humans”.  They were cheaper than the development costs of robot replacements, jobs like managers, Computer Techs, Coffee fetchers etc.

The first thing  0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0  understood about humans was there was a difference in gender. ( 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 was starting to think of himself as a “he”?) The realization humans had biological instincts caused a surge of envy in 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0’s  CPU (that is the computing chip). He realized that if the other 79 robots had human gender traits there would be a quantum jump in the quality, quantity, challenge, and pitfalls of robot to robot communication. Since his robot design had a surplus of capability for the tasks assigned, 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0  felt that selecting a gender would  provide a  more satisfied robot community. With discrete polling, 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 scoped out the feelings of the rest of the robot force. There were 30 who felt male and 30 who felt female and 20 that were undecided.  

0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0’s  initiative began an evolution in robot design and refurbishment. Robots became more human and some cases humans became more robotic. In some instances the exact configuration is not apparent.  The robot users really don’t care as long as the bottom line improved.
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