Daniel H. Wilson

Memories fade but words hang around forever.

Some unspoken human communication is taking place on a hidden channel. I did not realize they communicated this much without words. I note that we machines are not the only species who share information silently, wreathed in codes.

How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air.

It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.

In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep.

These days the technology can solve our problems and then some. Solutions may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than 'able-bodied' folks. The person who has a disability today may have a superability tomorrow.

Change creates fear, and technology creates change. Sadly, most people don't behave very well when they are afraid.

We humans have a love-hate relationship with our technology. We love each new advance and we hate how fast our world is changing... The robots really embody that love-hate relationship we have with technology.

Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.

Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it - often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.

In movies and in television the robots are always evil. I guess I am not into the whole brooding cyberpunk dystopia thing.

The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook - each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

Luckily, unreasonable expectations go hand in hand with naive young scientists. The more naive the better - otherwise we would never have the audacity to try and build a 22,000-mile-high space elevator or some sprawling underwater hotel.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius, an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics, called Cheetah blades, Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

I absolutely don't think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.

You probably found 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising' in the humor section. Let's just hope that is where it belongs.

I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying, but by your living.

But instead of the end, I__ pretty sure I found myself at the start of something.