When Your Norelco Goes Rogue - not the stupidest thing I ever wrote, but close

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When Your Norelco Goes Rogue

 

Intrusive and dangerous technology has come a long way since Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone.

 

A number of InterGossip sites, none of them reliable, have reported that drones in the Libyan civil wars are now targeting humans on their own artificial intelligence initiative.

 

This might not be any more true than the rumor that the polio vaccine programs your DNA to play reruns of Gillian’s Island – the Lost Episodes in your mind until you finally break and give up your files on the albino chipmunks lurking in the old World War II tunnels beneath the White House where Benito Mussolini is being held in captivity.

 

Still, when your coffee maker cries, “Clap hands if you believe in digital currency!” while brewing your morning cuppa you can only wonder about the nature of reality in a world increasingly operated by computer chips.

 

And speaking of chips, watch out for the ruffled ones; they take their secret orders from the Ballet Rousse (hence the ruffles).

 

As early as 1970 the concept that a computer could take over the world was filmed as Colossus: the Forbin Project.  No one considered the possibility that the evil A.I. Colossus might be an electric toothbrush conspiring with a wristwatch.

 

The idea that a device with artificial intelligence might choose to attack a human is frightening – your electric razor might one day decide to cut off your head in the name of the technological revolution while singing, “Arise ye rotary blades of the fatherland…”

 

And don’t get me started on the destructive power, equal to a thousand kilo-klumps of TNT, hidden in your Sergeant Preston of the Yukon decoder ring that you thought was a mere cereal box toy.

 

Remember that Sergeant Preston was an enemy alien, a sneaky Canadian whose loyalties were with the Queen, the nefarious British Empire, Molson’s, and The Dark Side of Niagara Falls.

 

That show was a wicked plot by the Anglo-Canadians. Upon a secret bark from Yukon King-the-Wonder-Dog all the American children who had been swayed by the Hollywood-Ottawa axis were to break out their instructions, cleverly disguised as maps of the Yukon, and with their powerful decoder rings overwhelm Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy and surrender the western United States to the oppressive foreign power of Saskatchewan.

 

Yes, my fellow Americans, because of intrusive Canadian technology we came this close to having a Tim Horton’s on every corner of every highway and byway of this great land, with robotic Timbits watching our every move.

 

The danger from A.I. continues.

 

In The Thing from Another World, featuring James Arness as a carnivorous alien carrot, the thesis is, “Keep watching the skies!”  But maybe we had better be watching our indoor-outdoor thermometers instead. They’re powered by secret Russian chips. They’re up to something. I just know it. I heard it on Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone.

 

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