With all this talk about the latest Terminator movie wafting through the air, it’s impossible not to strike up a conversation with someone about those pesky robots taking over. Whether you’re at the gym, a cocktail party or an art opening, the apocalypse is always a great ice-breaker, but the robot apocalypse is a real crowd-pleaser.

It’s impossible to embark on such conversations (at least for me) without thinking of the prescient lyrics and song titles of German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. In this case, both “We are the Robots,” or “Computer Love” are appropos.

Everyone is monumentally fearful of robots taking over and using their superior intelligence to kill us humans. Whether it’s Terminator, The Matrix, Lawnermower Man (to some degree) or numerous other films that prey on this archetypal phobia.. But what I wonder is how humans can be so deaf, dumb and blind to the fact that this “takeover” has already happened!

Humans are so seduced and enchanted by the “big” terrifying picture that they are missing the insidiousness of the tiny takeover–the one where we willingly allow our minds to be usurped. If you’ve ever walked down the street and seen a half a dozen humans with their heads facing down staring at- and tapping into their PDA’s you get the picture. Whether intentional or not, the machines have us right where they want us…on our electronic leashes (our iPhones, Blackberries and computers).

I will be the first to admit that I can barely go ten minutes without checking my email or Twitter, FB, Small World and numerous other digital hubs. We’re all walking around in states of quasi-conscious hypnosis, totally mono-focused on the meaningless minutiae of data…and more data. We have so much data we don’t know what to do with it so we blow a circuit and have anxiety attacks and go to therapy and take Xanax.

So, while, a global armada of angry robots aiming ray guns at us seems like the worst case scenario (or the most dramatic, filmworthy and exciting), I would like to posit that we’re already knee deep in an even worse case scenario–a slow, quotidien, insidious draw…one that’s so sneaky no one realizes they’ve been under its control for years. Not only is digital life addictive but it’s reshaping the way we perceive physical space through Google street view and iPhone 3G GPS tracking, etc. I wonder if we could even ‘find our way home’ so to speak without the use of such paradigms.

The only solution seems to be to “unplug,” a common theme in sci-fi movies. However, if you’re anything like me, you would find it damn near impossible to ween yourself off the daily bread of blogs, social networks, PDAs and email. Ultimately, the only do-able solution may be to take it all in moderation and keep honing our organic real life skills so we don’t lose touch with one of the few things that makes us human and gifted: our intuition.

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton