by Rolland Judd

Created on: September 10, 2009

Over fifty years ago there was a television program that conveyed the illusion of a man communicating with an orbiting spaceship by way of a hand held, cordless device. Fifty years ago this made for good science fiction, but actually possessing a real device like this in one's lifetime seemed ludicrous at best. Today nearly every citizen of the United States owns a cell phone and can use it to communicate with people worldwide. Not so ludicrous anymore.

Yet, in the face of these realizations, many people will still make the assumption that an idea or concept introduced by science fiction is "impossible". One such topic is that of a doomsday scenario that has been prominent in the realm of sci-fi where robots take over the world and enslave (or exterminate, depending on what you're reading/watching) humanity.

People generally like to think that this could never happen, for obvious enough reasons. Nobody wants to envision a future in which humanity is not the top of the food chain, that's natural. But to totally reject such a notion one should first ask themselves two very important questions. The first would be what does "take over the world" really mean?

This is an important definition that cannot be overlooked. Many would define it as geographical conquest; controlling all civilized territory on the planet. This definition would not necessarily be wrong, but the key word in this definition is control.

To reject the idea that robots could take over the world one would first need to identify how much control over the Earth robots already have and how much more they would need to have "taken over the world". Then of course there is the question of whether or not the difference between what they have and what they need is attainable. So how much control over the Earth do robots currently have?

One does not have to look far to see that robots influence their daily lives on a regular basis. Traffic lights are robots telling people when to stop and when to go. Automatic doors are robots that detect one's presence and kindly invite you in. And let's not forget Blackberries and like technology that are robots designed for communication, accessing information, tracking the location of people and places and various other tasks.

What's that? Not fair? These robots aren't sentient beings and it doesn't count? Well, the weather isn't a sentient being, but one would be hard pressed to deny the fact that the weather has control over the planet. Total control, no, and consequently

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