10 Twilight Zone Episodes That Eerily Predicted The Future
9. The Brain Center At Whipple’s
The original air date of this season 5 episode was in 1964 with its story taking place in the not so distant future of 1967. Wallace Whipple turns to machines to run his manufacturing company more cheaply and more efficiently. Massive layoffs lead to protests and a violent disgruntled former employee. In Twilight Zone irony, Whipple is eventually replaced by a robot played by the familiar Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet fame.
Today, losing one’s job to advanced technology is a bigger threat than ever. In 2017, McKinsey Global Institute reported “up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs to robots by 2030.
Very specialized jobs right on down to cashier jobs are being replaced by computers. Walmart has been experimenting with fully automated stores. Stop n Shop’s Marty the Robot is an obnoxious reminder of that threat just like Robby swinging a keychain like his human predecessor once did.