We will survive the robot apocalypse.
I can say this with certainty for a very simple reason. I
own a computer. I own a phone. They do absolutely crazy things and without my
caring but stern hand, they would crash and burn faster than the previous
computer I owned that also crashed and burned.
My computer has been on the fritz recently. The brightest
the screen can go is ever so slightly above black hole. Luckily it's above that
level, because otherwise all matter and light would be sucked into the darkness
of my computer and humanity would come to an end. As I recently said, if I want to see it, I
must lean in and hold a flashlight to the screen to make out vague outlines of
what may or may not be my icons or possibly pornography.
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| If the machines looked as cool as Arnie, they might have a chance. Maybe. |
It's annoying, but it's not the end of humanity. I even
treated my computer with the utmost of care. Who here among us hasn't said
"You know, I'd really like to have Doritos dust slathered into all of my
orifices." Just about everyone with the exception of my computer has made
that claim at one point, because I lovingly placed untold amounts of Doritos
dust in that machine. Same goes for "Do I actually need this F11
key?" My computer knew it was an emphatic "No!" which is why I
ripped it off in an attempt to get at the Doritos lode it had stashed
underneath.
Yet with all this love, the power invertors have stopped
inverting. The computer is now a very nice paperweight, bound to end up at the
bottom of a quarry. This robotic system died, much like those plotting world
domination will do.
On its own, this story might not be notable, but when paired
with the following occurrence, a disturbing trend in the computing world
emerges. I walked around downtown Seattle and needed to get to places I hadn't
been. I loaded up the walking navigation app and went on my way. That part went
off without a hitch, but when I hopped into my car to leave, problems exploded.
I put in my home address and hopped on the interstate.
For some reason, my phone thought it was actually me walking
the 65 MPH on the interstate. Note I didn't even say it thought I was running,
it just said "Oh, he must have had some protein today and can go faster
than any man ever has before. I'll just advise him to walk off the
interstate."
Every time I approached an exit, the magical talking voice
pleaded with me to exit. But I just kept driving, obviously messing with its
intricate logic system. Were the robots rationale, it would probably think
"Oh, he made an error countless people have made, I'll just adjust to
driving directions." Instead, I met the computer equivalent of a
screeching back seat driver/walker.
Some might claim these situations are all human error and
actually shows the infallibility of a computer that it can follow the idiotic
suggestions of a human, no matter how moronic the idea may be. Valid point, but
at the end of the day, this so called moron of a human being is still alive,
while his computer sits mournfully unused underneath a bookcase. And you better
believe my cell phone got silenced because of our (not) harrowing journey on
the interstate!
So fear not. Come December 21, 2012, we're not going to need
to worry about robots uprising and stabbing us with their space age plasma
swords. They're far too incompetent to actually succeed in that simple
directive. Instead, we'll probably all die by slipping on banana peels
simultaneously at everyone's "End of the World As We Know It"
parties.
Although, cyborgs on the other hand...
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