I have been beating the robot drum since around 2006, as Will Baird and Carlos Yu will attest. In fact, I have been worrying about it for a long time, ever since I asked myself, riding a number 6 train back in the 1980s, “Why do we need people running this thing at all?” A decade later, in the 1990s, I had an impassioned discussion with my (Texan) then-girlfriend about the terrible effect automated taxis would have on the Mexican middle class. I stopped reading most science fiction (Charlie Stross excepted, and I am wondering if this Blue Remembered Earth is worth it) because too much either bounced between “Singularity! Wild wow whoo-hoo! The humans are dead!” and completely ignoring the effect of automation. There was this science-fiction noir series set in San Francisco that dealt with some of the issues (I cannot remember the name, dammit!) but even it had a scene with a human truck driver that just did not make any sense.
All this is a lead-in to getting you to click this link. It is a conversation between two Navy pilots upon watching an unmanned X-47B perform touch-and-go landings on an aircraft carrier. It is awesome. Read!
Eschaton, baby!
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero | June 25, 2013 at 03:09 PM