The War is Over, and the Bots Have Won
Resistance to the robotic takeover of our society is futile.
A recent headline summed it up for me. I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, and if you dial 988 now, you reach the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. That’s a good thing. But then I read you could “text” the number too. I envisioned a distraught person holding a gun to their head, waiting for a live person to call them back. Does anyone think this is a really good idea? Abuse of technology is not an isolated problem. Instead, it symbolizes how the human race has conceded control of their lives to bots.
I had surgery in January of this year, and after waking up in the recovery room, I noticed that my nurse’s interaction time was 90% with her computer and 10% with me. At first, I thought this was a post-anesthesia drug haze, but the more I awakened, the more the situation remained unchanged. After an hour and a half, I finally asked her if my wife could visit. She said, “Oh, did you want to her to come in?” I said yes. Presumably, her computer did not remind her to ask the patient this important question.
My recent non-random and unscientific survey of contacting doctors’ offices found that one of twenty still had a human being answering the phone. For most offices, however, the caller faced many choices that I can only define as “touch tone hell.” Then, there…
