This discussion is not new. Quoting from Byte Magazine (Feb 1976 p77):<p>The first man to use a machine was the first of our primitive ancestors who picked up a rock to hurl at some passing animal or to crack open some edible nut. In the million-plus years since then, our machines have grown much more complex, but even in our modern era of computers, ... their basic purpose remains the same: to serve man.<p>Whether our machines truly serve us is a question much debated by science-fiction writers and other professional speculative philosophers. Does some essential quality go out of human life when it becomes too easy? Have our automobiles, telephones, typewriters and elevators sapped our vigor? Are we speeding into flabby decay because we have made things too easy for ourselves?<p>And as our machines grow more able, when do they cross the boundary that separates the living from the unliving? Is it possible that we are building machines that will make humanity obsolete? Perhaps the day is coming when we ourselves will be rendered unnecessary, and our sleek successors, creatures of metal and plastic, will inherit the earth.<p>... Many a bitter attack on the encroachments of the machine age has been produced by a writer using an electric typewriter in an air-conditioned room, innocently unaware of the inner contradictions involved. We need our machines, but we fear them...<p>-- Robert Silverberg, Introduction to Men and Machines.<p>In contrast I'd comment that this is a case of linear thinking. You don't own a machine, the machine owns you. Ask any home owner how wonderful the plumbing works... until it doesn't. Or ask a car owner, etc. We are already owned by machines. Is your phone beeping? Are you ignoring it? If it fails do you learn to live without a phone? Machines inherited the earth years ago. We just don't realize it.