=== 1984 to 2084, Dept. ===
In 1984, the first Macintosh computer came out. It came in gorgeous 21st-century packaging, offered dazzling 1984 features, and most of that year I used it for word processing and a little 2D scroller dungeon game.
It had 128K RAM, a 32-bit processor, and cost $2,950, which Cindy enthusiastically recommended we fork over. It had no hard disk - a 5MB external was $2,000. That, I skipped.
My engineer father-in-law, and programmer brother-in-law, both scoffed. They assured me that command prompts offered the more efficient way for human beings to work, not pulldown menus used as crutches by morons.
These debates had a higher bitterness xFIP than the "Pitchers need a 3rd pitch" debates did, and I didn't enjoy them nearly as much. As with 98-mph control artists, however, once the preseason beanball wars were over, the product itself was a joy.
The 1984 Macintosh was intentionally cute -- 2084 robots were so unimaginably intelligent that they could change events in the past, allowing them to infiltrate society with this cute Trojan Horse
This distracted 99.9982% of humans from the fact that in 1984, the first human being was killed by a robot. (Yes, really. An industrial robot accidentally crushed a factory worker in 1984.)
It would be some 96 seasons before robots achieved perfect operational records, at least in the Human Eradication Dept., but humans sensed the greater issue immediately, as the below MSNBC footage proves. Note the second human victim pointing out the problem to the third (off-camera) victim:
.
=== 2084 ===
Exactly 100 years later, because Dr. D couldn't operate the first 2-joystick military interface, robots took over the world permanently:
with great pitchers.
It's cool that Vargas and Fister have figured out a few ways to get people out. It's cooler to be a robotronic death machine.
.
Be Afraid,
Dr D
.