sunlight, the majority of all plant and animal life and earth would have
died as well. In fact, it's a good guess that before the machines really
started caring humans may have been one of the only species of life left
on the planet.
There's no evidence that the machines spent much time developing
advanced biotechnologies such as cloning etc. etc. themselves. We also
don't know what the world was using for energy at the time either.
Nuclear? Hydro electric? We can assume they were still using fossil
fuels which were in plentiful supply, but maybe not. Also, the drawbacks
which may have been acceptable for human beings, may not have been
acceptable to an 'advanced species' such as the robots. They may have
seen the inability to get rid of nuclear waste, or the continuing
degradation of the atmosphere to be too great a drawback to using these
methods of electricity.
However, basically, we're expected to simply accept the premise, just as
we are expected to accept three men in a cave, staring at shadows
produced from the light of the world outside.
-Gel
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Davis
1) The machines have a "soft spot" for humans in that we created them.
They
may not want to see humans exterminated, just controlled. They may not
have
meant to generate power in the first place, but after centuries (or
millennia) of keeping us alive and controlled they decided (as any good
machine would) to make use of the obvious resources until finally we
were
their only resource for power.
2) Although all we've seen in the power-generation aspects of the farms
it
may also be that the human mind is also used as a data storage and
processing device. Lower organisms wouldn't work as well in this
regard.
You could also say that dreaming is actually the by product of the mind
at
rest running program packets for the machines like an idle desktop
running
"seti at home". It would be interesting (although too late in the
movies)
to find out that "unplugged" humans never dream.
3) Since the power plants weren't constructed until much later, after
the
war ("we burned the sky" in the movie - presumably a reference to
nuclear
winter) we might assume that animal life had become more than a little
scarce. Maybe electric eels (and pretty much everything else) were just
simply extinct.
4) Even if there were electric eels around there's still basic science
to
consider. The electricity generated by an eel isn't really suitable to
our
(or presumably the machines) purposes, its direct current and packs a
jolt,
but is extremely quick and may not be useful to actually power something
(it's so fast that it really couldn't, for example, be used to charge a
battery). Slow and steady may win the race with the "special type of
fusion" developed by the machines (remember it's not the human body per
se
that generates the power but rather the bodies power that does something
to
allow these fusion reactors to work).
Also there's still entropy to consider - the eels would have to eat
voraciously to create the charges, perhaps more than the equivalent in
humans would have to eat. You never can get more energy that you put
in.
Also much of an eels body is dedicated to the electrical organs which
just
aren't good eating - recycling the eels bodies for food for the others
may
not be as practical as with humans.
How's that for over thinking a joke? ;^)
Jim Davis
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