Saturday, September 29, 2012

Robot Apocalypse

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Hope all you good folks Down Under are getting a taste of spring, because here in my part of the world, it's beginning to feel autumnal.

Talk about a surprise! I tried to comment on my own blog yesterday at school. I didn't want to sign in using my email. And oh my, for the love of fruit flies! It has become next to impossible to leave a comment on Blogger. The admins are so concerned that no robots invade that the top secret codes of shame have become rather like an eye chart on shrooms.

I tried three times for the first comment before getting it posted. I tried four times on the second comment before aborting mission. Really. What happened to cute little words like ByRd coan? Now it's numbers, buried in misty blackness. Letters that are even insulting to faeries, who love puzzles and riddles.

Are the robots here? I know they are coming. I expect within two decades you won't need to drive your car, because it will drive itself. (A lot of people who can drive are going to hate that.) I expect that, in the same amount of time, you'll speak into a device that will activate your kitchen to cook Chicken Kiev for you and have it ready at 5:35, as your car drives you home from work. Little droids like R2D2 will run to the grocery and pharmacy for you, where another droid will double-lock your Xanax into the R2D2's delivery system.

Funny thing is, your whole robotic life will probably have a password like 1234.

No. Just kidding. You folks reading this are way too smart for that password.

Most of the movies about robots paint them as sinister. TV shows too. What's more threatening than a Dalek?

Well, young'uns, I would like to use my acquired wisdom to reassure you. Sadly, I can't. I never would have dreamed that the ungainly word processing machine wheeled into my lab at Johns Hopkins University in 1979 would morph into a machine that would bring the end to newspapers, a radical restructuring of education, a fundamental change in how we do business and seek pleasure. To me it was just a box that made typing faster. That's how much I knew.

In conclusion, based on my own personal experience of the past 30 years, I would urge you to worry less about zombies and more about robots. If it's getting next to impossible to keep them off Blogger, it will soon be impossible to keep them out of the most subtle recesses of your inalienable subconscious, i.e., your fine mind.

3 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

" . . . worry less about zombies and more about robots." You're right, Anne. Keep your beady eye on that Mitt feller.

Anonymous said...

On the radio a couple of days ago, they were talking about cars that drive themselves. They exist. They want permits for them.
--Kim

Maebius said...

Yep, the Google Street View cars, for example, have been roaming the streets of America, (and even Underwater!!) and are autonomous.

Sources Cited:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/26/google-maps-virtual-diving-reef