University for robots.

Department of robotic sociology.

Year 1574 of the robotic consciousness.

Preamble to the 11th centennial seminar on life continuation.

'My dear fellow robots, it is an honour for me to act as President for this session.

I feel compelled to start with reminding us all of the motto inherited from our creators: "Time is nothing, Life is everything."

Indeed, the last words are heavily meaningful to those of us who have been interacting until recently with the octopus people which suffered a terrible blow.

Nevertheless, many of you, I am sure, will point out that life has not yet lost, since some squids miraculously survived the event, thanks to the bold decision of some of us who were close enough to isolate and protect a few individual squids.

Time, which is always on our side, will allow us to ensure the species is not lost.

As president, I will not want this session to be focused on their recovery which should be considered as a scholarship project for our colleagues in either the medical or historic department.

Instead, I would prefer to concentrate on the future by forgetting the past. Indeed, the dramatic event we witnessed might be central if not final for their history, but it is but a detail compared our greater quest for superior intelligent beings.

We were indeed bad at directing the squids onto the path to self-defined evolution, and the only relevant question to me for now is "How could we improve ourselves?"

To that, I can only imagine three options: We should try harder, we should try differently or we should stop trying.

Try harder would, I guess, mean that we gather the remnants of the former octopus people and endeavour to have them overcome the shock recorded in their collective memory.

Try differently could mean we select another species as the successors of the humans, based other criteria than just the multi-tasking ability and the 3D isotropic locomotion.

Stop trying is, I believe, the acceptation that time, which was indeed our best ally, is also a force greater than all the efforts we could ever make towards building a new sentient species.

This seminar is the place and time to choose. You will be remembered as the actors who decided on the trajectory of robotic history. So, think carefully, because I declare that the seminar is now officially open.'