perfidy

The University of Nebraska is working on perfecting the most devious and insidious use for robots yet. More invasive yet coddling than the robotic refrigerator, more inconvenient than the Sirius Cybernetics Nutri-Matic, and clearly a harbinger of a coming world where humans are nothing more than meatsacks to be shunted from place to place according to the whim of some malevolent Cray with a Playstation mind.

Reports already suggest our children are more tolerant of authority than their elders, yet mistrustful of politicians and actual individual figures thereof. What better surrogate than the electronic partners they have been weaned on? And what better way to take control than to automate the very sources of inconvenience, delay, and implacable authority, objects that already inspire feelings of helplessness, resignation, and inevitability?

What is this new menace?

What form have they taken?

Why should you arm your automobile with an aluminium bat, a reenforced bumper, and a law-enforcement brakes and steering package?

That's right. Those orange barrels are moving on their own. Weep for the children of tomorrow, for their future is as bleak as an Ohio winter.