Friday, October 28, 2011

Robotics video of awesome

So robotics is an amazing field of study, and I look forward to a day when this technology is available for use in commercial and personal settings.  There are lots of things that are hard to do, physically because of limitations of our little meat sacks and there are lots of things that are hard to do with robotics because of the limitations of there dexterity.  The type of robotics shown in the video will really change the way work is done and I'm all for it.  However watch the video and guess if you can see what my 2 problems are with it.




#1 I feel bad for the old dude that they picked to show that see good enough for a whipper snapper but greatly extended the usefulness of a old duffer like me!  It's local news in a sparely populated surprisingly conservative for such a bunch of hippies state, but right off it's pandering.  My Grandpa turned 78 this year, man is a great grandfather and will likely live long enough for his great grandkids to actually remember him.  I'd wager for the better percentage of people reading blogs he has a more active social life and that he's more active than them too.  My Grandmother (his wife) is a few years younger (72) and still runs a tanning salon largely on her own as well as being the accountant for their church.  She recently performed in a local musical!  Age is a touchy subject for me because I see them and think it has as much to do with how you choose to live your life as anything else.

#2 rather jarringly he calls the robot suit a slave, and does it repeatedly.  Slave still being a very socially loaded word on it's own, really disturbs me in light of movies like Terminator, and Blade Runner.  It is a really dangerous way to treat something, right now they are non-sentient but attitudes are pervasive.   Let's not start the war with robots by calling them slaves as we work to develop them.  Call them robotic tools to accomplish work, or personal mechanical assistants, hell anything  that isn't slave I suppose.

That is all.

3 comments:

  1. The machines will look back on this video and anger!

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  2. We are like 10 years away from building full fledged Gundam suits at this rate...

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  3. It needs to be yellow and have forklift grips.

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