Thursday, February 23, 2012

Do developing countries have an advantage in a robot uprising?

A few weeks ago I finished Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson. It's an entertaining and dark book about how humans survive a robot uprising in which machines of all types turn against humanity and attempt to enslave or kill everyone.

One issue not addressed in the book is how developing countries survive or don't. The book focuses heavily on the US and Japan, with only a few international scenes and references to what happened in Russia and China.

I would think that a country like Nicaragua or Colombia or Cuba would have some major advantages in fighting a robot uprising. First, technology is not as advanced, meaning there would be fewer robots or machines that the evil robots could manipulate. Second, underdeveloped and undeveloped infrastructure mean there would be more places initially for humans to hide and wage guerrilla warfare against the robots and fewer resources for the robots to use in building newer models of themselves.

So while the book has its heroes coming mostly from the US, I think it would make more sense for the first significant victories against the robots coming from Latin America and Africa.

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