OPINION

Humanity on way out

Columnist Sutapa Amornvivat writes, "Who is afraid of automation and robots?" I am. And you should be too.

Remember the days when you'd call a company's landline phone and get a live operator asking, "This is X company. How may I direct your call?"

Today you are answered by a menu, a choice of one to nine, which subdivides further and further, until you end up frustrated and hang up in disgust. KBANK is just one of the offenders.

We should indeed be afraid of robots and automation, as they are replacing people. Soon robots will be operating robots, while live people slink on overpasses with cups asking for handouts.

And parents telling their kids to deal with it are worse. We already have a zombified, animated population of those 18 and under, who are incapable of verbal, face-to-face communication, of socialisation, of thinking for themselves, of being able to calculate simple sums without a device in hand.

There used to be satisfaction in wishing someone a good morning, and receiving a cheery smile and a reply.

Now it's, "Shhh-don't bother me. I'm texting my friend." Khun Sutapa, spare us the automation.

How about a return to those old-fashioned human basic values instead. Human evolution one day may see people with 5kg, very large heads, tiny bodies, legs incapable of most activity, sitting on specially built platforms … texting.

In Thailand, there are four famous quartzite statues of the Buddha sitting on a throne with his feet flat on the floor in the so-called "European style".

Two of the statues are at the Phra Pathom Chedi in Nakon Pathom. Another, if I can remember, is in Ayutthaya. A fourth statue is in the National Museum in Bangkok. I recall seeing this statue many times on visits to Bangkok over the years. But for the past decade this statue has been in a small section of the museum that has been closed and off-limits to the public.

A decade is a long time. Why is this section of the museum closed? And when will the public be able to see the statue again?

Since, "10 policemen 'to blame' for expiry of Red Bull heir charge", (BP, July 19), just made news, if anyone stopped for speeding is charged, don't pay the fine or the bribe -- ask to go to court. If what happened to the Red Bull heir is true, this should stand up in the legal system for the rest of us, millionaires' kids or not. It is time the public at large stood up to police incompetence and corruption. Both seem to go hand in hand -- corruption before incompetence.

Last Monday afternoon I was caught up in horrendous traffic chaos in Chiang Mai due to religious parades and poor traffic management. I was forced by a traffic policeman to make a 30-minute detour across the river instead of a two-minute detour to my hotel at the night bazaar if he had moved a barrier two metres. I pointed to my hotel, but he just shouted "One way!" He then moved the barrier to allow a minibus through but not my car -- after all, I am a foreigner. He just added to the chaos. As traffic police are controlled from Bangkok there seems no point in complaining to his commander.

Charlie Brown in his July 21 letter, "Dangers of veganism", claims that being a vegan makes people behave inappropriately because "Sam the Vegan" drove his motorbike against traffic to bring attention to the cause.

I don't claim that eating meat causes people to write ridiculous PostBag letters, although Mr Brown's letter strongly suggests that it does!