I’m involved at work now with a project that uses robotics. In one case we have a robot that’s picking and placing 2 1/4″ disk drives in racks for testing. It’s fascinating to watch as this thing zips around making perfect, precise movements. I’m not too worried yet, however. So far the robots only seem to do what you tell them to, with painstaking accuracy. It’s really obvious when you tell them to do something stupid! .. and they execute exactly.

I do think about how things have changed so much in our communication, however. Machines are in the loop now with all of our thoughts and comments to each other, about everything, even the mundane. Every text message, e-mail, and this comment I’m writing now end up on a server somewhere. I guess there’s so much traffic that it’s unintelligible to anyone watching, unless they were looking for something specific. Ah, well, at least I hope so!

Watch what you comment… the machines can see it all!