Computers Are Cyberservants

Kings were wealthy because they had servants—one servant for feeding peeled grapes, one servant for sewing shirt from silk, one servant for cooking the best meal the kingdom could offer, one servant as a personal guard (with sword and shield), one servant for… you get the idea.

In the cyberspace, computers are cyberservants. They are instructed by coders, and they can be ordered to do anything—serve sites, securely accept money, render lewd graphics, create a happy-faced AI to talk about the weather, clean messy data, schedule blue light filter on 6 PM, DDOS some server, or even self-destruct. When you send an email, a cyberservant takes your mail and slides it down the recipient’s inbox, like a mailman; when you watch videos on YouTube, a cyberservant takes data from YouTube and displays it on your screen as audio and moving images; when you send Bitcoin, a network of cyberservants around the world mines the block to embed your transaction into the Bitcoin ledger; when you write on Google Docs with your colleagues, a cyberservant sends your keystrokes to your colleagues and displays your colleagues’ keystrokes to enable collaborative writing; when you use Photoshop, a cyberservant manipulates pixels for you; when you run a SaaS, a cyberservant delivers services to your customers and collects money on your behalf; when you encrypt a message, a cyberservant uses math to protect your message from being surveilled.

Computer operators are wealthy because they have an army of cyberservants working for them. Coders are wealthier because they can build any cyberservants they like.

March 22, 2022