Well, now, it appears the future has arrived with all the grace of a drunken mule at a church social. The good folks in China have been treated to a preview of what’s to come when our mechanical betters decide they’ve had quite enough of our human nonsense.
A child, bless his innocent heart, found himself on the receiving end of a robotic boot to the belly, a gesture that would make even the most ornery mule blush with shame. The story, as it wends its way through the digital ether like a snake-oil salesman with a new cure, has set the world to clucking like a henhouse full of hens who’ve just seen a fox wearing a bonnet.
People are wringing their hands and asking whatever shall we do with these metal contraptions that we’ve unleashed upon ourselves like a plague of locusts with circuit boards. The irony, as thick as molasses in January, is that we’ve spent decades building these infernal machines to serve us, only to discover they’ve developed a taste for human interaction that’s about as gentle as a grizzly bear with a toothache.
What tickles my fancy something fierce is how everyone seems surprised by this turn of events. We’ve spent our lives telling stories of machines rising against their creators, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to that moving picture with the Austrian fellow who keeps saying, “I’ll be back.”
Yet we continue to build these metal monstrosities with all the foresight of a man digging a well in the middle of a river. We’re like a bunch of monkeys who’ve discovered how to make fire, except instead of keeping ourselves warm, we’re busy figuring out how to burn down the whole jungle.
The footage, they say, has gone viral faster than a rumor about free whiskey at the temperance meeting. Folks are sharing it with the same morbid curiosity that draws them to watch a train wreck or listen to a politician make promises.
Everyone’s an expert now, offering opinions with the certainty of a riverboat captain claiming he can navigate the Mississippi blindfolded. “We need more regulations!” cries one. “It’s just an isolated incident!” insists another. Meanwhile, the robot in question is probably sitting in some warehouse, plotting its next assault on unsuspecting children while humming “Daisy, Daisy” in a metallic monotone.
What we’re witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, is not merely a case of machinery gone awry, but a perfect illustration of human folly. We have become so captivated by our cleverness that we’ve forgotten to ask whether we should do something just because we can.
It’s like the man who invented the telephone but never stopped to consider that his mother-in-law might now call him three times a day to complain about her rheumatism. Progress, it seems, marches on with the subtlety of a brass band in a library, and we’re all just trying to keep our toes from getting stepped on.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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