Icarus had these awesome wings held together by wax that let him fly. But he was so into it that he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he fell to his death.

John Connor was raised from birth to the be the head of a human army to fight an army of super-androids with human skin whose sole desire is to destroy all humans.

For all of history there have been stories warning about technology – either the joy of the freedom that technology brings will bring death or the robots will turn on us and destroy us. I sometimes wonder from where this fear comes. Is it a conservative fear – technology will destroy the old and the traditional? Is it an ancient fear – did something happen frightening deep in human history, too far ago to ever discover that is only remembered in these dark fears?

There was an article in the New Yorker recently about Google and in it many people are described as worried that that Google is out to rule the world. Their technology is changing business models in several industries that had never before been directly challenged by the tech companies. This fear that this tech company is out to take over the world also, in some way, embodies this same fear of technology. They want to digitize every book? It scares people on some level. There’s something of the Tower of Babel in it.

Where is this all heading? I think most of this is just pure fear and totally irrational – like the fear of flying or having your photo taken. But could there be something to it? Is the singularity near and is it to be feared? Is transcending biology a good? I cannot say but in the mean time I am going to learn as much about computers as possible and at the same time learn survival techniques – hedging my bets.