Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Maybe those old science fiction writers had it all wrong.

Maybe it never was going to be robots that would kill off the human race and take over the world.

Maybe it was cell phones all along.

I guess I have a distrust of machines. I'm one of those people who thinks machines should do exactly what they're supposed to do. When they don't, I grouse and moan as if it's all some grand conspiracy against me, or humans in general.

I recall walking home from a night-time showing of a sci-fi movie when I was a kid. In the movie, some kind of industrial plant seemed to be the enemy, although aliens from outer space may have caused all the problems. The plant resembled the oil refinery where my dad worked. After the movie, I had to pass a small electrical substation on my way home in the dark. Oh, man! It looked just like the place in the movie! I ran as fast as my P.F. Flyers would carry me.

This is just to point out that I have always had a healthy respect for the malevolent potential of machines, large or small.

I just read a story about scientists who are working on programming computers to read facial expressions, to be able to tell if a user is bored, or agrees or disagrees with something. Maybe, they hope, cars, Web sites and cell phones will be able to read facial expressions and body language and respond accordingly, although I'm not sure what "respond accordingly" actually means. That bothers me. Machines are supposed to do what we them to do, not "respond accordingly." Sounds like something that might wind up on Oprah.

I'm just not crazy about machines like cell phones being able to tell if I'm kidding or not. I don't want to think about huge, HAL-like computers or tiny cell phones saying, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that," in voices that sound a lot like Stephen Hawking.

While all this touchy feely stuff is going on with software designed to make our machines, especially our cell phones, more responsive to our feelings, a whole other batch of scientists is worrying that cell phones may be hazardous to our brains.

Nearly two billion people use cell phones. Scientists are attempting to determine whether the phones that emit electromagnetic fields can cause brain problems.

In Italy, they used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to look at how the brain functions during cell phone use and learned that the motor cortex, the part closest to the phone, becomes excited -- which means there's a muscle twitch. When you hang up, it stops.

What does this mean? I don't think they really know. The study was only of 15 young guys, anyway. Another study said cell phones, over time, can raise the risk of brain tumors. Another found no evidence they harmed human cells or DNA. A third study found no evidence cell phone radiation is harmful.

It's all very confusing.

Which, if you stop to think about it, is probably just how those crafty cell phones would want it if they were planning to take over the planet.