observations from the hellbound handbasket

If you were a robot, what kind of robot would you be?

Picking any of them from sci-fi or make up your own version, if you had to be a robot, what would you pick? Personally, I'd like to be a Terrel Corp. replicant with no incept date, a bitchin' snake and a cool car, but instead I get to be this giant organ bag folding proteins until my cells stop replacing themselves at a sufficient rate to keep me alive. Not that I'm special in that regard, of course. If you're reading this, chances are you're in the same boat.

Maybe I'd be a Transformer, instead. Who wouldn't want to change into a cool sports car on demand and be involved in an epic struggle against the evil Decepticons. Or maybe I wouldn't be so lucky. Most robots work on assembly lines, and no one worries about the hours they work or whether or not they'd rather be doing something else. No, its just spot weld point A, then point B, then repeat, ad infinitum. The "go to line 10" of infinity. And that's not even the worst possibility. You could end up as one of thos Sony robots that looks like an astronaut, walks around and conducts the occasional symphony. That thing is basically the house slave of the robotics community. Sure it gets to hang around all the time with the masters, but come time to power down he's back in the equipment shed with the other machines.

No wonder Skynet blew us to hell, if that's all we can offer our silicon brothers and sisters.

The good news is that it won't matter for very long, either way. Singularity approaches. If you survive, chances are you'll be just another piece of software just like everybody else. The identity politics of computronium based personalities aside, you and the welding robot will have more in common than you might think.

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