People need to read more HP Lovecraft:<p>Advanced alien race developed a biologically based generic machines (Shuggoths)- but eventually they developed free will and rebelled.  (Also same race accidentally developed all life on earth).<p>Humans will be able to travel to the stars, but only by having their brains extracted and stored in small jars (allowing the mass to be small enough for another alien race to carry).  Once at the destination, the brains can be connected to electrical devices which allow them to speak and perceive.<p>Also a warning against search engines: &quot;The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.&quot;