Robots are already amongst us...

I am currently sat in a room with my hair in a top knot and not a scrap of makeup on my face with three other people *round of applause for my bare face please, this is a rare occasion and a bunch of tulips or a pop of a bottle of champers wouldn't go a miss*. Three out of three of those people are connected to some kind of virtual means. We, as a collective group, are not an apple short of a fruit bowl. If a stranger walked through our door they would be forgiven for believing that they had walked in to a) the future of b) an Apple shop. We have an iPad, an iPhone, a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air - a fact that needs to be addressed for the purpose of this piece, I am not bragging, I don't have the energy.

Each one of us is talking, not physically, a word is not escaping our coffee stained lips. Instead, we are talking through the mystical world of the internet. Not to each other, please, that would be weird - although I for one have been known to text someone in the same room as me in a modern day Chinese whispers kinda manner.

We are talking through Facebook Chat - we used to talk through MSN, until we realised no amount of emotioncon will make us thirteen again. The room is silent, when people say that "you could hear a pin drop" in this case they would be right. In fact, the only form of noise is fingers, gallantly skipping across the keys, creating the kind of beat Mark Ronson could throw a rap at.

This is not the first time I have been in this situation. In a dully lit room with nothing but the pitter patter of a keyboard to numb the silence. And no, I am not talking about my past experiences in Libraries up and down the country.

In fact, this is a fairly familiar line up. One that makes me question our futures - not in a politically kind of way but in a "will I one day, only have friends which go by the first name Mac or need to be plugged in when they appear limp and lackluster"? Luke is not our father, Apple is. And they are spinning a web that we, not matter how conscious of it we are, are tangled in beyond our control. We shalt not break free. Just think of the iPad mini. Essentially, and sorry to burst your bubbles but, it is your iPad popped in the microwave for thirty seconds on high and shrunk to the size of your palm. It is however the next big thing. Where as once we wanted everything to be bigger, we now want it to be smaller. We like things to be compact, to fit in a handbag. We want our iPhones slimmer, our heels thinner and our computers the size of a Jane Austen classic. Where will this end? Will we want our men and their "accessories", shall we say, to be smaller!?

I am loosing my point.

Ah yes, our descent into a virtual world of crumby spelling and bald yellow faces.

If we do not stop tapping away (myself included), forging friendships through Facebook chat and basing our popularity on the amount of retweets we get in a day, our ability to communicate with a actual human being will cease to exist. So put down the laptop (myself included again) and friggen well  talk, after all how much will exercising your fingers really help you in the long run - oh, take your mind out of the gutters, y'all know what I mean.