Wildcat is coming to get you
Beware the rise of the machines! Do you ever have the experience where you look at something in our technology and you remember back to flashes of that in fiction, long before it became a reality? Gibson writing about cyberspace… Stephenson’s metaverse… the self driving cars of Total Recall… 2001’s video phone… There are loads of examples where fiction gets the future right. And that can be a horribly frightening thought.
Case in point, meet Wildcat. Surely you have run across a story (or a dozen) about computers/machines taking over the world and wiping out/enslaving humans. Wildcat is the foot soldier of our evil, mechanical, AI overlords. Look at that thing. And then imagine the self-driving technology/GPS/face recognition/NSA data mine/wirelessly networked possibilities. You can’t hide from Wildcat. Now would also be a good time to recall rat-thing from Snowcrash…
Admittedly, it’s totally possible that the machines don’t ever take over the world. A swing and a miss is a pretty regular thing in fiction. After all, we still don’t have those flying cars, there is no path to immortality, and our cities are still 100% zombie free. That being said, this is something to consider the next time you marvel at how powerful Siri or the Google voice search is. And if you still aren’t frightened by the possibilities of Wildcat, have a look at this video.
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Tags: neal stehpenson, rise of the machines, snowcrash, wildcat, william gibson
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