I recently came across a story about a self-driving car  hitting and “killing” a humanoid robot.  If you have not see the shocking video – it can be found at this link:  https://www.techworm.net/2019/01/self-driving-tesla-autonomous-robot-ces.html

I wondered it this was a glimpse into our future.  Is the future where the “internet of things” is taking us?  Will it be a bleak, dystopian future where we are all plugged into the matrix to provide power for the machines that have rebelled and taken over?  Will self-driving cars turn out to be even worse drivers than humans?  Will we waste a good portion of our lives in virtual traffic jabs jams trying to get to our virtual jobs where we develop throbbing fingers from incessantly pushing a button like George Jetson?  These are questions that just cannot be answered in the present.

Decades before “The Matrix” portrayed us as simply batteries for the machines, Rod Serling also gave us a glimpse to the future of the relationship between man and machine on an episode of The Twilight Zone which aired in 1960.  In “A Thing About Machines”  Bartlett Finchley is a man who hates machines and lets them know it.  By the end of the episode even his electric razor is out for revenge on him and slithers down the stairs snake-like coming after him.

Who knows what the future holds?  I would suggest that you be nice to your machines today and hopefully they will be nice to you tomorrow.  I think I will file this blog under  ‘M’ for Machines – in the Twilight Zone.