Since my childhood I have been warned about them. Someday will come when they will realize their superiority over us simple humans, take over the world and take their place as technological overlords.You know what I'm talking about: terminators, genius evil androids, transformers, technically enhanced humans, depressed androids and robots with identity issues. All superior due to their technical prowess.
Indeed, technology is a very powerful and yes, entertaining thing. Some people don't want anything to do with it. Technology is too energy consuming, to complex, missing of any emotion or warmth. Few others warn of security and privacy implications.
Most of them think in terms of that which exists, that which has always been. A fixed reference to our roots, the physical world and old civilizations.
However, all those people forget to take into account some other basic and primitive elements in humanity. The hunt for new riches, the thirst for information and most of all the need to evolve. Some people still question evolution, others think we evolved from primates and that was it. However, for millenia, our environment has challenged us to adapt and we did so using technology.
We have evolved by making and using new tools to manipulate our environment. We have come at a point in time where we don't need to evolve to survive in our environment. Instead we ourselves have become the masters of our environment.In all those years evolving, we have really not evolved ourselves. Look at how we treat the environment we have mastered and how we treat each other. It seems, humanity has still a long way to go, but who do we need to conquer?
Today, judgment day has arrived. In an effort to compensate for the imperfect, that is us human beings, a leap has been made. A leap into an uncertain future, to transform, to adapt or to succumb. In no other time in human history has technology progressed to such levels as now. It's all around us and there is no escape.
We can make a simple choice: evolve into human 2.0 or become the Paranoid Android. The future does not seem to hold any other alternative.
Being quite on the paranoid side myself I was not enjoying this prospect. The big corporations would rule us all. All aspects of my life would be monitored by some overlord with a big mustache, or beard for that matter. However, some while ago an interesting thought occurred to me when reading the daily early morning data-breach news headers. Security, privacy, image and revenue are the pillars of technology. Take one and the technology will ultimately fall.
With these thoughts in my mind I reasoned or adapted my worries away as I purchased the T-mobile G1, the Google phone with Android. And what about the terminators and transformers? Well, time will tell but the future looks bright!
