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Joe is a 1974 model logic, and this is the story of how Frank Caldwell saved civilization as we know it.
Frank is a salesman who deals in logics. It’s a machine like an old fashioned TV. Just ask it a question, press a few buttons, and after a few calculations it spits out the anser. Sounds like a computer to me.
A bratty kid and his dad enter and insist on a particular logic, and name him Joe. A Logic can not only answer questions, but also offer advice. will it do something crazy like tell you how to kill someone? They’re just harmless machines, right? with society highly dependant on their logics, it would overthrow life, and order if people let the logics take over and tell them what to do.
In a humorous, tongue in cheek telling, criminals try to take advantage of the heavy influence of these machines on the world. Just when you think that people will take advantage of the machines, they turn around to block the attempt. Machines know your life history, connect you to long lost loved ones, know secrets about personal lives that we would like to keep secret. It sounds a lot like the internet, and computers of today, almost too much like the security and privacy issues that we face now.
How does Frank deal with his problem from the perspective of 1955 looking ahead to the mid 1970? Call out military force? Hide from the cops? It was Frank who discovered the security risk with the logics, and it’s his idea that will plug the hole. It all hinges on the logic named Joe, and it has to be put to a stop.
PS: Often mid 20th century futuristic writers get it all wrong, or atleast figure that technology will either move at a mpre advanced rqate. Though the technology in this episode is slightly ahead of it’s time, it’s not that far off. It only missed by 30 or 40 years. Computers now evade just about every aspect of our lives. We freely upload our personal data into the cloud, lr on social media sites, and ex;expect p;ublic forums to be our private place to rant. Hackers, spammers, scammers have taken advantage of security flaws, but in a much bigger way than in the show. Fortunately, just as in the show, humans are still capable of outsmarting machines. They aren’t the real cause of the havok afterall. machines are simply tools that can be used equally for good, or bad. It’s people who are still in control of that.
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