Friday, February 4, 2011

Achtung Human

The remorseless jackboot of Technology is rapidly trampling my career underfoot. The Maginot Line of my usefulness, as it were, is being breached by those twin stormtroopers: the memory chip and the microprocessor. I am one of the last remaining unconquered peoples, one of the few. The algorithmic gestapo will come for me sooner or later, however. The lights will go out all over my office and that quisling project manager will bid me turn in my spreadsheets for the last time. But I still feel superior, professionally speaking, to those whose jobs are merely being outsourced and exiled to some third-world Smogopolis. At least my position is being usurped by some form of ingenious automaton, and not by just another, cheaper type of human being. Indeed, it has taken a great deal of scientific innovation to invent a machine capable of doing my work. We're talking an almost "Super Brain" level of artificial intelligence. The company can't simply download any old software program, and then configure the code to complete my operational tasks, oh no. They need a series of complex, custom-built workstations linked to many network servers to simulate my level of skill and experience. In short, the new me will be called Sisyphus Protocol SS-70, and not Gupta from Mumbai.