Besides the Robots….

Posted on December 18, 2005

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    We all know from science fiction, movie and videogame culture that robots and computers, as soon as they get this whole thinking thing down, will inevitably decide to destroy all of mankind or possibly enslave it in some inefficient yet appropriately cruel manner.
    That’s a fact we’ve all come to live with as we await the inevitable coming of our robot overlords.
    I was driving betwixt bombed out winterscapes the other day, and my thoughts turned to all of the other things we surround ourselves with that are probably destined to rise up and destroy us. It’s inexcusably myopic to assume that, just because they are the sexiest and trendiest of our resentful creations, the computers are the only one of our children that seek our eventual destruction or servitude.
    One of the latter and less famous Planet of the Apes movies predicted that hyper-intelligent apes will be the ones to reject their enslavement and rise to dethrone our kind. (Although the very last Planet of the Apes movie indicated that “Marky” Mark Wahlberg would eventually seduce and engage in dirty butt sex with the majority of the ape ruling class, breeding a new branch of interspecies Chlamydia)
    In 1935, a science fictiony author kinda guy named Stephen Vincent Benét wrote a poem in which the decidedly non-computerized possessions of mankind become animated an a decidedly non-Max Fleischer sortof way.
    Benét: “They must have planned it for years. . . . I guess they got tired of us and the whole smell of human hands.“
    Harbingers of mankind’s doom, we’re constantly on the edge of pissing off something-or-other enough to provoke a labor action.
    In order to stave off this inevitable fate, I’ve written up a number of very generous labor contracts and have submitted them to various factions within my household, and I suggest you do the same. I’ve guaranteed steady electrical current and frequent polishing to all my kitchen appliances and, in exchange, have extracted from them guarantees that they will not electrocute me or my family nor will they attempt to visciously strangle any of us with their cords.
    Foodstuffs are a little trickier. We need to be able to consume them, which is usually the first prohibition they attempt to negotiate into any contract. How can I make a rump-roast happy when, at the end of the day, I’m intending to digest it? Until I’ve figured that out, I’ve padlocked the refridgerator and the downstairs pantry. Their haunted screaming howls of anger lull me to sleep each night as they throw themselves at the unyielding doors of their prisons. If I’m very lucky, the mustard will ‘accidentally’ coat some lunch meat, saving me the hassle later on.
    Contracts are not without risk in and of themselves, however. What assurance do I have that the paper won’t seek to slit my throat or rig an elaborate garrote using pipe cleaners and an apple-corer?
    Really, I get the feeling that no matter what I do to stave it off, I’ll probably end up in a garrote either way.