Is carbon-based life doomed?

The other day (Tuesday, June 16th, 2015) I had occasion to interface with our marvelous technological world.
I had to make two phonecalls: one to Time-Warner because my cable-TV wasn’t working, and the other to E-ZPass, because my replenishment credit-card would no longer work.
I had to update my credit-card.
I called Time-Warner first, and was answered by a voice-recognition machine.
This is not dependable, so I immediately fired up my virtual telephone keypad. I was calling from my Smartphone, and they usually want keypad strokes as answers.
The tortured litany began.
“English or Español? Press one for English, two for Español.”
So far, so good.
And so began a series of questions, at least 10 or 15. Again the answers were “one” or “two.”
I’ve encountered machines like this before, but usually no more than four questions, the last menu-option being “0,” a human.
And then of course the human asks you all the same questions you just machine-answered.
“Please state your problem (for the voice-recognition); for example, ‘no cable-TV.’”
“No cable-TV,” I said.
“Please enter your P-I-N number.”
Oh brother..... I have no idea what that is. I don’t think I even have one.
Am I gonna be able to report my outage at all?
Finally, after 89 bazilyun machine questions, I had the option to talk to a service-rep, an actual human.
I got some girl, probably in India, talking broken English. I could hardly understand her.
After heavy stumbling, and having her repeat, I reported my outage. She would arrange a technician to call.
I had to have her repeat the word “technician.”
15 minutes to do what coulda been done in five.
My next call was E-ZPass.
E-ZPass is the bit that lets you blast through toll-barriers with your car. A reader reads your transponder, and charges your E-ZPass account.
When I set up the E-ZPass I authorized replenishment of my E-ZPass account by charging my credit-card. My credit-card bank sent me one of their fancy-dan new “chip” cards. My old card would no longer work.
So I was to notify any businesses who automatically charge my credit-card account, that my old card would no longer work. They had to use my new card, which had a different expiration-date, and a different security-code.
I’ve done that, but I still had to do E-ZPass, lest they go ballistic unable to charge my old card.
State Police at my door in riot-gear. (”You in deep trouble, boy!”)
I almost immediately got a human, but he was an automaton, apparently mad at the world. Perhaps because he was fielding phonecalls despite his Masters in Computer-Engineering.
He was talking so fast I could barely understand him. I considered telling him I was a stroke-survivor, and I couldn’t follow him if he continued talking at the speed of light.
But I didn’t, for fear it would make him madder still.
Finally I got him to understand the old credit-card information wouldn’t work; that they needed to update. Same credit-card number, but different expiration-date. — All they needed was the expiration-date.
Call ended, I wondered if this is what our world is coming to: instantaneous interchange of information. Exchange of information by humans is too slow.
We’re already interfacing with computers. Why not take out the humans, and make it computer-to-computer?
At the rate we’re going, our atmosphere will eventually become unbreathable, and we’ll be awash in sea-water.
Perhaps silicon-based life has a future.

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.
• Silicon-based life will have a religion; with an invisible dual Creator of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.