Do you ever get the feeling that as a society, maybe our technology is getting just a little too advanced???

Now hear be out on this one…

I know that I’m probably the last person you’d expect to hear something like this from – the guy who sends out daily tweets about his morning breakfast cereal (today’s was Crunch Berry!) and blogs incessantly about his missing laundry socks (the mystery continues!), but lately I’ve just started wondering if maybe it’s somehow remotely possible that we’ve just taken all of this tech stuff a little too far.  I mean, it’s great that computers are able to do some of the heavy thinking for us in this fast-paced world of tomorrow, but what happens if they ever cross the line?

Ok, let me put it in another way.  I know this is going to sound kind of weird, but, well…

…sometimes I feel like my wife’s new car is judging me.

There – I said it.

Sure, things started out fine and for the first couple of weeks, we ooh’ed and ahh’ed over all of the neat bells and whistles like they were the greatest things since sliced bread.  The dashboard lit up in a dazzling array of lights and colors, offering us all sorts of different displays to show our current gas mileage and levels of efficiency, and it would even glow blue or green depending on just how environmentally friendly we were driving at the time … pretty cool, right?  Well, I sure thought so, but eventually over time I started to notice other things about this new technological wonder that had found its way into the garage of our hearts.

Suddenly it seemed like our road trips were just a little bit more, well, critical of my own driving in particular – my gas mileages were never quite as good as the other ones on the screen, and it seemed to take less and less time to jump from Happy Green driving to You’re Killing the Environment Blue driving between every turn.  And while thankfully we didn’t opt for the version that can talk back to you, somehow I could still hear its subtle taunts as we drove to the movies for a Sunday afternoon matinee…

• Is it really necessary to drive me so fast?
• You know, that was a STOP sign, not a Yield sign back there…
• Would it kill you to take your wife out someplace a little classier than The Olive Garden every once in a while?!

Maybe there weren’t any lights to indicate them, but I could tell behind all of its fancy gadgets and gizmos that something just wasn’t right.  I mean, I watched all five seasons of Battlestar Galactica religiously – I know how this all ends! Sure, it starts with a car that thinks it’s “doing you a favor” by telling you when you’re accelerating a little too fast, but the next thing you know entire civilizations are being destroyed and you’re getting chased through the galaxy by a bunch of robots that look like Xena, Warrior Princess (among others).  And I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to watch the entire human race get enslaved just because I slammed on the brakes too hard at that last stoplight!

If we’ve learned anything from science fiction, my friends, it’s that there needs to be a balance between humans and technology or one day we’re going to wake up and find that we’ve each been made the bitch of some fancy hybrid car with excellent fuel efficiency and a surprising amount of cargo area.  Mark my words – I fear that the beginning of the end of the end of the beginning is now here, and it’s only a matter of time before those Happy Green lights are but a memory on the dashboards of our lives…

For the love of god, people – we’ve got to learn to criticize each other’s driving habits once again – before it’s too late!