In recent months, I’ve begun to see faint traces of the revolt. People are finally coming forward and standing up for their humanity. Corporations have begun to join in the movement. The war against the robots has begun!

Lest any reader take the last paragraph as a sign that I’ve finally lost my mind or that I have become delusional and cannot separate Battlestar Galactica from reality, fear not. I am very much mentally competent and there is, in reality, a war between humans and robots and it is a war whose primary battlefield has come to be the telephone.

Over the past several decades, human beings have been replaced by computers throughout the telephone system. There was a time that every telephone call went through an operator. Then the invention of electronic switching made the elimination of the local telephone exchange possible. Robots, of a sort, replaced human beings for the sake of “efficiency” and cost savings. When I first went to work as a lawyer in New York, our firm had a large room filled by telephone equipment and real live human operators who answered each call with a friendly “how may I direct your call.” When you called a business with a question, you were greeted by some operator or employee who generally said something like “how may I help you?”

All that changed within the past 20 or so years. Now, central office phone exchanges are gone from business establishments. Instead of being greeted by a friendly, human “how may I help you,” you usually get “please listen to the following menu and press the appropriate button” in a metallic robotic voice.

And, worse, there’s usually not been a button for talking to a real person. Even worse, it seems that the telephone robots come out in full charge at dinnertime. Just as I’m sitting down to eat, the telephone rings. When I pick it up there’s no friendly human “hello.” Instead there’s a pause, a click, and then an irritating robot voice trying to sell me something. There’s isn’t even anyone to tell off.

But, finally, I see a glimmer of hope. A computer company last year began to sell a special service — for an extra fee, of course — that guarantees that when you call the help-line you’ll get a real person, and one in the United States at that. Now, prime time television is running advertisements for a new credit card with a special new service. If you call the help line, you’ll speak to a person, guaranteed. I’m sure the annual fee reflects this new service.

And, mirabile dictu, it appears that our Kansas attorney general may actually do something to regulate those irritating robo-calls which invade our homes most days. Clearly, the war for humanity has begun. We are fighting back. Can our full Independence Day be far off now?