Scenario #4: Robots

(Apocalypse How? #4, 2010)

Ever since the dawn of technology, when people realised they could use tools instead of small orphans to perform everyday tasks, there has been concern that these implements could turn on their human masters. In the past people feared simple things, such as being threshed to death by their own wheat thresher or attacked by a sentient windmill, but as our technology grew more elaborate so too did our paranoid scenarios. With the advent of robotic technology in the early 20^th century, it didn’t take much for the public to concoct terrifying visions of these robots growing vastly more powerful than their makers and terrorising humanity. These fears have been reflected in our popular culture, which has been rife with robot-based apocalyptic visions. We all know the stories: robots attempt to wipe out all humans (I, Robot); robots use humans in giant energy farms (The Matrix); a cold, emotionless robot tells hordes of human drones how to think, feel and act (Oprah).

Of course, many of these ideas hark back to a time when everyone assumed that robots would continue to grow larger and more human-like, performing all our household chores for us while expressing bewilderment at the thing we humans call ‘emotion’. You don’t need to watch embarrassingly outdated clips of Beyond 2000 to see just how differently things have turned out: after a few awkward trips to Uncanny Valley, humans decided that they didn’t want wisecracking robot maids after all. Instead, we opted to focus on making technology smaller, putting time into finding ways to carry thousands of hours of music around in your pocket, or to fit all four seasons of Alf on to a computer chip the size of a small nut.

So, it looks as though we won’t be facing down hordes of ten-foot high killer robots any time soon. But could a robot apocalypse, or ‘robocalypse’, still happen? Well, yes. It’s always a shame to see a perfectly good doomsday scenario go to waste, so some folks have put a new twist on an old classic by proposing that it may in fact be very small robots that will prove to be our undoing. They see a future in which swarms of tiny nanobots programmed to consume certain types of matter – such as oil from a spill or unsightly vomit stains on George street – could go wildly out of control and instead consume all living material on earth, turning the entire planet to dust in a matter of days. Indeed, it seems that as technology gets smaller, the robocalyptic scenarios just become more and more terrifying.

Of course, this is all speculation and we may never reach that point. Just in case, however, I recommend boycotting all forms of small, convenient technology. Dust off your old  Macintosh 128K and get your box of cassette tapes down from the attic. Come on, I know you’ve got Ace of Base’s Happy Nation hiding away up there. Oh no, wait, that’s me. Never mind.