Cats!

I visited my oldest son on Thanksgiving Day. He has one of those robot vacuum cleaners that moves about the house remotely and cleans under sofas and chairs, in corners and just about everywhere a human can reach.

But when the robot ventured beneath his living room sofa to do its cleaning thing, my son’s cat, who had been watching the machine carefully and with some suspicion, pounced off of his perch and refused to let the robot escape. Each time the robot attempted to report back to the light of day, the cat would bat it back to its underground lair, essentially rendering it useless.

So humans of the world do not despair! And Terminators of the future take heed! In the coming war between the Humans and the Machines, it will be the Cats who shall save the day! (so please make sure your cats get some Thanksgiving leftovers. It’s the least we can do and the future of our planet may lay in the balance of their gratitude!)

Who Can It Be Now?

Remember hearing the phone ring, picking it up and then saying hello… without already knowing who was on the other end? If you do then you are probably close to my age. Those were the days when answering the phone was like going on a mini-adventure.

Could this be for me? Is it the call I have been expecting? Will it be good news? Bad news? A friend? Family? Business? Pleasure? Who can it be now?

Was it good to have a ringing phone be the beginning of an adventure?

Or is it better when you already know who is on the other end before you pick it up…or decide to let it keep ringing.

Once upon a time when your phone rang you could always pretend that you weren’t home…now when your cell phone rings, where else could you be? Today, the advent of cell phones has made it very hard for children (with cell phones) to avoid their parents which I suppose is good for the parents but not so good for the adventurous teen.

And of course texting is like creating a carbon copy (remember those?) of your message for later proof that you tried to reach that certain someone when they were pretending to be “out of touch”…because pretending is exactly what they were doing now wasn’t it?

And of course let’s not forget that cameras are now on every corner and street light and in every store and on your phone too, so Soon there will be no hiding from anyone at any time…unless your future plans include living on that reservation in Brave New World.

Once upon a time the adventure was in not knowing who could be on the other end of that line.

In the not too distant future the adventure will be in trying to remain a mystery yourself…

 

Rise of the Machines?!

So I’m walking through the Home Depot looking to check out and There’s a long line of registers with no people working at them. Finally I spy one lonely human working the register where about 10 contractors are lined up waiting to be checked out but I only have 2 small items to pay for. Woe is me! But then, Hark! I hear a voice. “Please purchase your items here.” or something like that…and it’s such a sweet voice, so nice and polite and it’s a machine! But such a nice machine. So I push the buttons and put the money in and all the while the machine helps me to push the right buttons and check the correct oracles or whatever and then thanks me and wishes me a nice day. (even as I’m halfway out of the store) It never gave me an attitude, or complained when I fed my money to it too quickly or in the wrong hole. It didn’t tell me a story about it’s long day or ask me how the weather was outside where the people roam.

     As far as I know these machines are not from another planet, nor are they invading our borders from foreign countries to the north or south. And I don’t think they are making themselves or being hired because they have other machines in high places who they are related to. But they are awfully nice and awfully efficient… and apparently taking the jobs of humans! And I don’t think that the humans are that upset about it. In fact it was a human employee (I think she was human) who said, “Don’t wait on line. The machines will help you.” (or something like that)

     PEOPLE OF THE EARTH! WAKE UP BEFORE IT’ S TOO LATE! IT’S THE MACHINES! THE MACHINES ARE TAKING OUR JOBS! WE MUST STOP THE MACHINES!

     But they are so polite. I really like how polite they are…