At some point in my childhood, my favorite reading materials jumped from comics to my dad’s collection of science fiction. Those early sci-fi authors wrote with an insight to the future that comic books only hinted at. They somehow knew the direction planet Earth was headed: satellite weapons systems, toxic disaster, unexplainable weather, radioactivity gone wild, talking machines, resistant bacteria … it was all there, our future, laid out with uncanny foresight.
One prevalent theme that ran rampant in those futuristic stories was the inevitability that man-made machines would rule the world. Whether by revolt, human error or electronic glitch. Well, take a look around.
People held hostage by flickering images; hypnotized by every kind of screen and device imaginable. We drill miles into the Earth under the ocean for oil with no safeguards in place should something go wrong. Billions of humans compelled to have communication devices pressed to their ears at all times.
The list goes on. Machines have taken control sooner than any science fiction story predicted.
