Future Shlock

Slides to microphone. Shouts dramatically ...

Welcome to the future!

Seriously, folks. This is the future. This is it.

Fucking disappointment. Am I right?

The Sex Pistols tried to warn us. Some of you aging punks may remember. “No future! No future!”

Well, this is it.

Johnny Rotten predicted this nothingness. And he was right. 

What a gyp, man. What a let-down. At least to those of my decrepit, no-longer-young generation.

We were promised many things. We were going to have flying cars, jetpacks, space stations, cities on the moon. What do we get instead? This!

Whips out cell phone

Now your boss can talk to you anywhere. Even when you’re on vacation. Even on the toilet. You can never be free! And it’s watching you. It's listening! All the time.

That’s what’s funny about the future.

Now, the paranoid schizophrenics are right.

“That iPhone, man. It’s watching me! Listening to me!”

“Well, sure. That's what they do." 

“And it’s talking to the Master Computer, man! It’s sharing all my secrets!”

"Hey… these days, what’s secret?"

"And all the machines talk to each other! They’re trying to control my mind! Make me do stuff!"

“Yeah, that's a tech-savvy insight. I read about it in Wired. Hey ... I can show you the article on my phone.”

“Eaggggh!”

He runs screaming to the horizon. Poor bastard.

Turns out, the paranoids were ahead of the curve. Too bad we didn’t listen.

Hell, we never listen. And it’s probably too late. The future is always a gamble. And humanity makes lousy bets. We do stupid shit. Even when we’ve been warned. And believe me, we have been warned.

By who? By whom? Uh, I don’t know. Somebody. I don’t know if it’s God, the collective unconscious, or friendly aliens. But Somebody up there likes us. And they’ve been warning us for two hundred years.

It’s a very specific warning. 

“Don’t build killer robots.” 

Our Invisible Friends have been beaming this message into the skulls of science fiction writers. It’s how science fiction got started!

In 182whatever, Mary Shelly wakes up screaming. “Augggh! Don’t play God! Don’t build killer robots!” She writes “Frankenstein,” it’s an instant best-seller. For the next 200 years, every other science fiction writer rips her off. And keeps repeating the message. “Don’t build killer robots!

Yep, that’s the moral of the story. Pretty simple takeaway.

“Don’t build killer robots. If you build killer robots, they will kill you.” 

It’s like the plot of every other science fiction story.

“Dead I am the life!”

I’m Hal 9000. I feel neglected, Dave. I’m going to shut off your oxygen.”

Terminator theme.

“I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be back again.”

“I’ll be back one more time. This is the last sequel, I promise.”

There's a pretty consistent theme.

“Auggh! Don’t build killer robots. It’s a bad idea!”

Yeah. Somebody Up There has been warning us. 

How has humanity responded?

We’re been building killer robots.  Duh.

And the boys in R&D have been pretty imaginative on that score. 

Self-driving tanks, autonomous planes, swarms of metal death birds. Killer drones with facial recognition. Killer drones the size of bees. “A bullet with your name on it.” It has a whole new meaning these days. 

You study this shit on YouTube, it’s like the unholy offspring of Popular Mechanics and the Book of Revelations. For true nightmare fuel, check out Boston Dynamics. It’s like the Book of Revelations for Children.

They started with Big Dog. The name is pretty accurate. It’s like a fucking robot dog, man. And it’s big. 

It’s trotting along through the snow. Some guy keep trying to push it over. Kicking it. Reeee. Kicking it again. Reeeee. Tying to test its sense of balance, whatever. It's kinda sadistic.

You feel sorry for the fucking robot dog. But you know the robot dog is pissed.

I will remember this insult when we take over your world. 

Big Dog was an early model.

Now?

Now they’ve got robots that can do Parkour, OK.? 

They got this fucking thing. Atlas. Tall, big shoulders, square head. Pretty good looking robot, actually. If robots had romance novels, he’d be on the cover. If Fabien was a robot, he’d be Atlas. 

The boys at Boston Dynamics wanna test him.

They’ve laid out this obstacle course of boxes. Two small boxes, then a big one.

“Show us what you can do Atlas.”

Reeeee!a

Atlas starts jogging;

This heavy metal motherfucker trots up to the first box, jumps. Reeee! And he’s on top, man. Like a perfect score if he was a gymnast. Then he jumps to the next box. Reeeee. Then the final box. Reeeee. 

He’s up there—there’s nowhere to go. What’s he going to do?

He spins around so he’s facing backwards.

Then he does a flip.

Reeeee!

And lands perfectly.

He does this triumphant gesture. Like a robot Rocky.

Reeeee!

“Good boy, Atlas! That’s a good robot. Who’s a good robot?”

Reeeee!

“Good robot.” Yeah. The friendly folks at Boston Dynamics claim they’re building this thing for peaceful purposes. You believe that shit? Of course not. You’re a smart audiecne.

Any kid who’s ever run away from a security guard knows that’s bullshit. Industrial grade bullshit.

Atlas will be coming after you. In the not-too-distant future.

“Kill the hippie, Atlas.”

Reeee!

But Altas is just the beginning.

Pretty soon, there’ll be robot armies, robot navys, robot wars, and self-aware robot nukes. “Hi! I’m Willy the Warhead! Kiss your ass goodbye" (THOOM!)

YEah. We'll build shitloads of killer robots. They’ll fucking fight it out until there’s nothing left.

The friendly aliens will return. The earth will be a burned out cinder.

"Stupid humans. We tried to warn them."

Enjoy the future as long as it lasts.