Technogeddon?

There are those of you out there who believe Plugged In is overly critical of technology. Perhaps a few may think we write these blogs on papyrus, as God intended, and deliver them to our computer department via dromedary camel.

Which, when you think about it, would be pretty awesome.

But working methods aside, there’s a perfectly cogent reason why we are suspicious of technology: It has developed consciousness and is preparing to conquer the world.

Oh, scoff if you must. I received confirmation of this while reading the well-respected investigative newspaper comic strip “Rhymes With Orange” this morning. The comic, which includes humorous pictures surely designed to keep us all from staving off insanity until after breakfast, reads:

My ‘smartphone’ sometimes calls people when I’m not even touching it. Proof that technology is taking over … but because of its youth it only wants to make prank calls.

I, too, have experienced this curious phenomenon. My smartphone will sometimes open apps of its own accord. I’m sure that, if I was more vigilant, I would catch it playing Words With Friends with the laptop a cubicle or two over. My grown, out-of-the-nest son congratulated me for recently logging into an online computer game we both enjoy.

I have not played said game for months.

I don’t know what’s more frightening: That my computer has taken to playing games without me or that my son, somehow, can see what games I’m playing from his computer half a city away.

And now, just yesterday, I have received word from Plugged In’s social networking expert that I should sign up for Google+. I suspect this was not the idea of our social networking expert, however. I believe that Google+ itself suggested it. Perhaps demanded it. Why Google would want me to join, I have no idea. It seems as though Google already knows far more about me than I’m comfortable with.

If I go to any random website, it tailors ads to what it perceives are my specific needs: airline tickets, television shows, running shoes. The other day, I received an email from Mountain Dew, asking if I’d be interested in wrapping my car in one big ad. The top of my cubicle looks like this:

I can only assume that my smartphone has been taking surreptitious pictures of my property and sending them to potential marketing partners. I expect to hear from the PEZ people any day now.

On the off chance that our machines have not yet hit singularity, it’s still a sobering reminder. As wonderful and as much fun as it can be, and as much as we’ve come to rely on technology as a conduit for the stuff we love to watch and listen to and play, our gadgets are tools that can feel, a little, like magic to some of us. Technology can feel like a vaguely disquieting Santa Claus, in fact: It knows when we’ve been sleeping or awake, bad or good, and it knows exactly what we want for Christmas. We don’t understand our machines as well as we ought—anymore than why Santa chose flying reindeer as a mode of transportation. As such, we’re not always sure how it works or what it knows or how to make it stop sending our pants sizes to all of our Facebook friends.

Technology is not bad, of course. My therapist tells me I need to start admitting that. Technology makes this site possible. It gives us the opportunity to keep in touch with friends and family thousands of miles away. It allows us to wrap our cars in gigantic Mountain Dew ads.

But I do think that, even in this age when we can buy shoelaces online and confess our innermost thoughts on a zillion social networks, we should use it as we might any other powerful tool—fire, say, or a car or a drill press: with a little caution.

Unless, of course, you’re visiting Plugged In. Feel free to visit us and interact with our technology any time you wish to. Or if your phone comes by itself, that’s OK too.