Robots Rule the World!

Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction novel in 1950 named “I, Robot” in which robots rule the world; pretty common plot now but innovative then. It didn’t take long for the reality to catch up to the fiction. My computer is a robot and is definitely the one in charge. Even as I write this there is some mysterious chuckling going on back in there and it sounds to me like multiple entities.

Last night I decided to download the latest version of Norton AntiVirus and spectacularly proved this point. I’m not the greatest computer techie, by any means, but I can read instructions fairly well and know when and where to click an icon when I’m told to. Duh. The first glitch was that my Internet Explorer wouldn’t function…which started an avalanche of troubles and a technical Catch 22. You need an internet connection to download the antivirus but the download blows out the connection. And then it started…a phone call to my own private computer bud who tried to help clear it with me (by phone). Unable to help, he finally suggested I call my server, AOL. AOL tried to help then told me to call Microsoft since Explorer is their product. At first Microsoft tried to pass the buck back to AOL but ended up suggesting I call the manufacturer of the antivirus program, Norton. I went through three separate customer service folks at Norton; I didn’t catch the name of my first helper but he passed me on to Babu (I’m not kidding) who subsequently transferred me to Rasheed . Five hours later my new antivirus is installed. I think. I hope.

Those far-away, incomprehensibly accented voices on the phone are now, in my paranoid imagination, coming from my computer and they are playing some sort of card game with 'puter chips ‘n dip and bytes of data, probably swallowed without chewing. So I am enslaved, just as you are if you’re reading this, and so are those five customer service people I talked to. Isaac was right. Both Asimov and Newton (that’s a very fuzzy joke about an iMac...get it?)