When Apple released a statement on its design process last year, the company said, rather poetically, that every great design starts by trying to evoke an emotion in a person's heart.
Compare that to Samsung's design statement, released this week, in which Samsung claims that its own designs are "inspired by humans." Not made by humans. Inspired by us.
Which brings me to one conclusion: This was written by some malevolent A.I. bent upon the enslavement of humanity.
Let's consider all the evidence. Under Samsung's first tenet of design, "Balance of Reason and Feeling," Samsung writes:
Humans are the heart of Samsung design.
This eerily conjures imagery from The Matrix, in which humans were grown in pods and harvested for their bioelectricity by a race of post-apocalyptic sentient machines. Humans were the heart of the Matrix, too: The living pulse of a mechanical hive mind bent upon mankind's perpetual enslavement. Samsung goes on:
Humans are beings that combine reason and emotion, and the balance of these two natures has enabled our culture to flourish.
In having to define what a human even is, Samsung proves that it is a company of non-humans. Samsung defines a human as "a being that combines reason" and that most inexplicable and repellant quality of "emotion," which Samsung later signals it knows nothing about:
Samsung aspires the design that delivers a new 'meaning' and 'delight' to people, which contributes to society by creating sustainable and innovative value.
Here, "sustainable" probably means the sustenance that Samsung eventually hopes to draw from mankind by harvesting its collective bio-energy. But note the pincer-like air quotes around the words meaning and delight. Samsung knows enough about humanity to know that humans feel something called delight, and that their souls yearn for some larger meaning outside of themselves to make life more bearable, but it is impossible for Samsung to comprehend. These are concepts that simply can't be expressed in binary code.
There's more, including Samsung's use of machine-like syntax to express what design is in a way that a Cylon could understand, but we've made our point. In releasing this design statement, Samsung's not just trying to copy Apple. It's openly broadcasting its intentions to replicate humanity as well. When soldiers from the future travel backward in time to stop the Terminator-like holocaust that follows, they'll return to this moment--when Samsung signaled that it was becoming Skynet, and the world did nothing. The war for the future begins now.