As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

– Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto

The world as we know it — the world dominated by homo sapiens — is quickly coming to an end. We may well be the last generation of “true humans” that live out natural lives, and I believe that it is essential that we embrace body modification in order not only to safely and positively prepare ourselves for transition into our next evolutionary step, but also to survive that step. We’re not just watching human evolution — we’re about to watch a battle for survival between human and non-human entities in what you’ve heard me talking about for years in my online journal: the coming human-robot apocalypse.

Laugh it up, puny humans, but I’m not kidding. Hear me out before you assume this is just crazy old Shannon on another conspiratorial rant.

Introduction

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Many people who know about the dangers still seem strangely silent. When pressed, they trot out the 'this is nothing new' riposte — as if awareness of what could happen is response enough. I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

– Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems