The future sounds better with Morgan Freeman

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The future sounds better with Freeman

THERE is something spellbinding about Morgan Freeman narrating a documentary.

The 76-year-old actor's voice has such sonorous depth, such warm timbre. For me, he leaves Richard Attenborough and Patrick Stewart in the dust.

It's become something of a running joke on the internet, with a wonderful spoof titled Morgan Freeman Narrates His Own Birth doing the rounds.. "When Morgan Freeman makes a documentary, he narrates it first, and then nature makes it so," intones a voice resembling that of the actor.

"The only reason that you are alive right now is because Morgan Freeman is narrating your life, as he does for billions and billions of others each day."

His roles in Bruce Almighty and the sequel Evan Almighty mean he has displaced Charlton Heston as the voice of God for the younger generation.

Yet, somewhat confusingly, he revealed the secret to developing his voice in an interview a few years ago: "Yawn a lot."

Fortunately, you won't be doing much of that during tonight's premiere of Through the Wormhole, now in its fourth season.

This stimulating episode asks: are robots the future of evolution? Will we choose to merge with the machines, combining the best of our world with the best of theirs?

It's worth considering what robots already do for us.

They are fighting our wars. They are exploring the universe for us.

Google has them driving on Californian highways, in cars built by other robots.

But the science fiction genre betrays the significant anxieties we have that robots will become too advanced for us. We fear they will cease tolerating their human masters, let alone want to merge with us.

The Terminator franchise, the Matrix trilogy and the outstanding TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004-09) are but a few examples from recent years.

Some people take the prospect of merging with robots, or technology more generally, very seriously.

Noted futurist Ray Kurzweil outlined the case in The Singularity is Near (2005), wherein he predicts humans and technology will fuse by 2045.

I propose we start by merging Morgan Freeman with a robot. He is not a young man, and his narration is simply irreplaceable.