Are Robots Taking Over The World?!

This here is R. Kikuo Johnson's The New Yorker cover, "Tech Support". 

Established in 1925, The New Yorker magazine was originally published as a "fifteen-cent comic paper", as creator Harold Ross said. But now, The New Yorker is a very influential magazine all over the world. Known for its political and cultural commentary, fiction, poetry, and humor, this magazine has become "a daily digital destination for news and cultural coverage by staff writers and contributors". 

Now, let's bring it back to this specific New Yorker cover, "Tech Support". 

Looking at this cover, you're probably thinking to yourself: "What is this cover be trying to tell us?". Well, I'm here to tell you exactly what I've been thinking about it.

Johnson seems to like to pay attention to detail in his cover. As you notice, one machine or robot (whatever you want to call it) is giving a homeless, actual human, man what seems to be money but it’s actually just gear parts. It seems as though the multiple robots walking along the street are acting like normal people walking to their job. One is even holding a smartphone in his hand, one’s walking a robot dog, or even sipping on a cup of coffee. From looking at all of the details in Johnson’s cover you can come to the conclusion that he's showing us how in this instance, these human-like machines have more power over the humans or maybe he’s trying to tell us that with all the advancements in technology over the years, like a human microchip, that one day technology all over the world would advance so much that we’ll create human like machines and they’ll eventually take over (I hope that never happens).

But, if you dive deeper, looking closer to the homeless man and seeing how every other robot is just walking past him and basically ignoring him, you could say Johnson is trying to show that with technology being advanced every day, it could distract us from real issues like homelessness.

You can interpret R. Kikuo Johnson's cover in many ways, there is no wrong answer. But, through this blog post, this is how I interpreted it.