Humanity Versus Technology

One of the central themes in the Hyperion saga is the relationship between humanity and the civilization of artificial intelligences, known as the Core, which it spawned. This relationship is as complex as the interconnection between the Pax and the Core. The Core is responsible for many of the technological advances that created the Hegemony, the remnants of which became the Pax. Much of the dynamism in the relationship is caused by the fractious nature of the Core, whose AIs were original modeled off of programs to model viral propagation. The Core is a dog eat dog collection of individuals and cannot be said to contain many organizing factions. Their dealings with humans are complicated by this schizophrenic nature. One of the central questions seems to be who uses who more. When, at the end of the Hegemony, it was discovered that the Core had been...