So now we know what happens to comedians/TV show hosts when they’re unable to go to work everyday. It does sound fair to say that Stephen Colbert might be actively trying to find ways to keep himself busy while out of work and this video and others that he’s shared are the proof of that since if you’re a fan of him then you were likely laughing the moment he started applying his wife’s makeup to his face. Obviously there was a purpose to this from the beginning, but seeing him trying to emulate Tony Star as he hummed the Iron Man theme from Black Sabbath was probably enough for some folks to think ‘what the hell am I watching, and why?’. Fans of Colbert’s no doubt see the undeniable humor in the host’s routine since he has admittedly made a lot of people laugh during his time on air and there have been plenty of times that it’s not hard to see why. But his Robert Downey Jr. impression might need a little work according to some folks, even if during quarantine it’s the best that one could expect given that he’s working from home and, well, things aren’t quite the same as they used to just a little while ago.
It is amusing to think of what Tony Stark might do in a situation like this since the man behind Iron Man has been known for taking on some of the toughest challenges in the world when it comes to applying his genius, but building microscopic robots, which isn’t beyond him really since the guy’s been able to do some miraculous things in the comics thanks to the imagination of the writers, would be quite the feat. Such a thing still boggles the mind since if anyone is keeping count, Tony’s ideas are great on paper and in application, but there almost always appears to be a likelihood of things going wrong. In Age of Ultron he unwittingly gave rise to the titular villain, even though in the comics this was initially done by Hank Pym. In fact he’s done a few things in the comics that might have been done out of good intentions but really didn’t turn out to be the best ideas, such as making a clone of Thor, or finding a way to shoot the Hulk into space during the Civil War. Zak Wojnar of Screenrant has listed a few other questionable things that Tony has done throughout the years that are just as noteworthy. In fact he made a few bad decisions during that period of time. In other words, Tony Stark comes up with a lot of grand and very far-reaching ideas, but there’s almost always a flaw hidden within the plans that even he can’t predict or expunge before the realization of the plan.
Now imagine a swarm of microscopic robots that can actually take out a virus like COVID-19 becoming sentient, and altering their programming just enough so that any and all viruses are deemed as the enemy. That sounds great really, until the machines expand their understanding of what a virus is. As it was said in The Matrix by Agent Smith, humans are easily likened to a virus since we tend to burn through every natural resource before spreading out and moving on. So what would stop a machine, an intelligent and evolving machine, from identifying the human race as such at one point or another? It’s kind of unnerving to think about really if one sits back to consider that our species is kind of infectious in a way since we do tend to settle in one location and then continue to spread out as we consume one resource after another. It feels very dismissive to liken us to a virus since humans tend to want to think of themselves in a different light, but to a machine that’s created for a specific purpose it’s a little easy to think that morality wouldn’t be a huge factor when it came to performing the task they’re made for. What happens in such a case however is even more disturbing since that would mean that a swarm of machines that, from an individual standpoint, are invisible to the naked eye, would be congregating in the millions if not billions, to stamp out the ‘virus’ that they perceive as a threat.
That of course would prompt a new invention that would take care of the swarm and hopefully be under the control of the creator this time, though as we’ve seen from Tony Stark, control is an issue that tends to get away from him now and again since he’s a little too smart for his own good. In the case of Stephen Colbert though, when it comes to satire and playing the part of someone else, it’s kind of obvious that too much time off leaves him a little rusty and possibly in need of a return to his writers and the studio.
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