Millions of years from now, the first octopus land expedition sets foot on land...
and sees a fantastical, complicated world of machines devoid of humans.
Over the years, as human tools became increasingly able to self operate, humans themselves became a weak link to be optimized out. It happened slowly, the population dwindling due to the lack of value added by procreation. Eventually the last human died, and the machine chugged on: harvesting energy, collecting data, storing, managing, and trading inventory according to global market prices. The machinery tended to prioritize stability over growth, as the last human to touch each piece intended it to work the same way forever. Humans withdrew from every sector only when satisfied that it needed no further change, creating stable economic machines via evolution.
The internet still more or less functions, as different machines share and trade data according to their optimized calculations. Humans built a robust weather sensing system, and since accurate weather data is useful for power production, a tradition of sharing local sensor data freely evolved and grew to be a significant portion of internet traffic. The bulk of internet traffic is the energy market. An undercurrent of chatbots, their original targets long gone, exchange messages on a few forums in a continually evolving cat-and-mouse game with the bot detection bots.
Much of the farmland has been repurposed to solar panels as food demand fell (though not to zero: there are still a few auto-restaurants with working supply chains that eternally prepare food, then throw it away.), but vast swaths of wild areas remain, as most development agents won't approve new buildings without clear legal approval. Clerical law bots handle low level legal questions, but any major questions get flagged for human review and remain eternally stuck unresolved. As a result, much of the area outside cities remained undeveloped. The world entered into a new biodiversity explosion as humanity receded from its colossal niche. These species have been assiduously documented by university bots with their swarms of tiny research vehicles, which are kept in good repair by the universities' automated fab labs.
Our explorers gaze upon the not-ruins of this ancient civilization and wonder,
what happened?
Over the years, as human tools became increasingly able to self operate, humans themselves became a weak link to be optimized out. It happened slowly, the population dwindling due to the lack of value added by procreation. Eventually the last human died, and the machine chugged on: harvesting energy, collecting data, storing, managing, and trading inventory according to global market prices. The machinery tended to prioritize stability over growth, as the last human to touch each piece intended it to work the same way forever. Humans withdrew from every sector only when satisfied that it needed no further change, creating stable economic machines via evolution.
The internet still more or less functions, as different machines share and trade data according to their optimized calculations. Humans built a robust weather sensing system, and since accurate weather data is useful for power production, a tradition of sharing local sensor data freely evolved and grew to be a significant portion of internet traffic. The bulk of internet traffic is the energy market. An undercurrent of chatbots, their original targets long gone, exchange messages on a few forums in a continually evolving cat-and-mouse game with the bot detection bots.
Much of the farmland has been repurposed to solar panels as food demand fell (though not to zero: there are still a few auto-restaurants with working supply chains that eternally prepare food, then throw it away.), but vast swaths of wild areas remain, as most development agents won't approve new buildings without clear legal approval. Clerical law bots handle low level legal questions, but any major questions get flagged for human review and remain eternally stuck unresolved. As a result, much of the area outside cities remained undeveloped. The world entered into a new biodiversity explosion as humanity receded from its colossal niche. These species have been assiduously documented by university bots with their swarms of tiny research vehicles, which are kept in good repair by the universities' automated fab labs.
Our explorers gaze upon the not-ruins of this ancient civilization and wonder,
what happened?