Mercury

What it is about robots that makes them want to take over the world, I will never know. But rest assured, they do. Even that cute little Aibo holds incalculable animosity toward you and is simply biding its time until the moment is right to strike. Just wait until we have smart appliances that are trying to poison your toast and coffee; every morning becoming a ritual of death defying maneuvers solely for you to survive this gauntlet of murderous antics and get to work. That is, of course, if you survive your smart car's attempts to kill you along the way. Believe me, it's coming.

 

In our culture, we have historically told stories about technology rising up and overthrowing us, usually after we've been massive dicks to it. This fear or technology is a strikingly western mentality, whereas more eastern outlooks see technology as the savior of mankind. We have the same distress about genetically engineered children becoming super humans that can dominate us all. This stems from, I suppose, a sense of inadequacy in our feeble intellect and meager physical strength as compared to our creations and a haunting fear of becoming antiquated as they surpass us. Just about every science fantasy story we create involves the human protagonist being physically and mentally inferior to the alien antagonist, with the human undoubtedly prevailing in the end due to the indomitability of the human spirit. We even assume that robots will eventually evolve to the point where they integrate biological components and want to look like us, because they think like us.

 

There is always the option of embracing these changes; of adapting one's self with bionic hardware and genetic self mutilation, but we risk damaging our soul, or something. Thus, something that is not us is automatically perceived as evil for its very nature and rational self preservation. Never mind that we operate on the same set of instructions and can't get along with one another well enough for 5 minutes, let alone with robots. The entire basis of this fear is founded on the assumption that any robots we create will think like us, will even give a shit enough to want to take over the world.

 

- Centzon