Good Morning Dave

Sometimes parallels can be drawn by how life imitates art. Unless you've lived under a rock for the past forty years there have been some amazing breakthroughs in science and technology. The jury is still out on the overall benefit of some but the main consensus is that these advancements are really for the betterment of mankind.

In 1969 man left this planet to explore the moon. The power of the "state of the art computer" they used on those flights today had less calculating capability than today's average cell phone. This is techno-mechanical evolution.

Around that same time period, 1969 - 1970, a movie titled "2001 A Space Odyssey" took the world by storm. Future technology showcased telephones that could transmit live television pictures, meals cooked almost to order immediately, and computers that could interact with man. Look at today's net books, cell phones, laptops etc. We link up and see each other in conversation in real time anywhere in the world.

A few years ago there was a movie titled "I Robot". Taking technology further with robots and computers that could interact with man and preform tasks at a simple request. Man harnessing machine for his own betterment.

Now look at today. We've got a major auto manufacturer who is having more problems with their product than a baker on wedding day with a cake that won't rise.

The manufacturer of these cars says's it's mechanical. Some say it's electronic. Being the skeptic I am I want to lean towards the electronic. The electronic world, while man has studied it and has harnessed it for our own advancement, still doesn't quite know it to the point of it being a fool proof technology?

We hear about it all the time. Technical failure. It's the buzz word that's used to describe all kinds of major screw ups that no one can understand or replicate. It's almost as if technology takes on a life of it's own. Teasing us. Humiliating us. Taunting us to look for an answer that we can't see or understand.

Now what does the movies have to do with any of this? In "2001" the computer has conflicting information fed to it and it just goes hay wire. For as advanced as this computer was supposed to be, it took on a mind of it's own and made judgement calls. A judgement call it arrived at on it's own using the conflicting information man fed to it. That call resulted in a really bad outcome for the crew of that space ship.

In "I Robot" there is an underlying theme about random bits of computer code joining together and forming new codes and actions. Again all of this was done by man not being able to control the technical situation and letting it slip out of his hands like a slimy eel covered in swamp slime.

Today we have vehicles, computers and the alike that have all these electronic gremlins. I know this first hand. One type of electronic gremlin I have come across is while flying in those new generation"fly by wire" European Airbus airliners. I can't recall how many times we were just about to push away from the loading gate when the pilot comes on the public address system and says's he has to shut everything down to reboot the computer! REBOOT the computer? We're not talking about a Windows style freeze up here are we? What do you mean REBOOT? If the hard drive crashed does that mean the plane is next? I really feel safe in a plane where they have to turn it off and kick start it and hope it flys to the next location. I can see in my mind the pilot on the phone calling Geek Squad for instructions. Only to be told they need to bring it in to the nearest location. And bring it in FAST! What if this dam thing stops dead at 35,000 feet? What if the "Blue Screen of Death" appears on landing in the fog over a crowded city? Computer crash takes on a whole new meaning.

So, you ask, what is the common thread in all of this? I believe it is nothing more than a distinct parallel to the choice handed down to man in the Garden of Eden. While the gift of knowledge has it's profound and unmistakable benefits to mankind it also can lead to mans own demise. In our quest for the expansion of our knowledge and technology are we some how lifting the lid on a Pandora"s box of fast held secrets of the universe? In mans quest to go where man has never gone before has he evolved to such a point that his capabilities are such that unlocking these secrets will be kept in check? Is man really capable of harnessing up the unknown and riding it off into the night sky? With the complexity of the advancements we make, how can we evaluate all the variables that exist and potentially coexist or could combine into another entity altogether with it's own mind? Do we really know where we're going? Is our quest for having it before the other guy at any price or to get the product on the shelf and fix it later with new updates really for our betterment? Is this technology driven society no longer being driven by innovation but by greed? How soon will we waking up hearing Hal say, "Good Morning Dave?"