Everyone. T0.5! Skynet is here. This is the beginning of Skynet. Japan has been fucking around with robots for awhile, but mainly because they want to combat Godzilla and/or fuck them. They've always danced in the world of toys. THIS SHIT? THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE? It is looking to tap into your home. It is looking to brainwash your children. It is looking to make sure John Connor is never born. It is making sure we're all plugged into a virtual reality world where humans have to live underground in a world they call Zion. Their lives are monitored and controlled by things called Agents and we have to wait for a burnt out surfer to learn karate, gunplay and yoga moves to save us all...shit maybe I got mixed up. Focus: Jibo, do you want one? What do you think about it? Does it excite you? Does it scare you? Alt-Focus How do you feel about robots? Especially the Japanese sex robots? Is this the beginning of a HER platform? What the fuck? What do you want in a robot? Alt-Alt-Focus What technology scares you? What technological possibilities scare you? How do you feel Skynet begins? (Please leave off paranoid hillbilly/old people shit like: the internet, cellphones, webcams and or fitbit.
I warned you all so many times that eventually we would become batteries for the robots. The horrible, horrible robots.
I was watching it on mute at work and got excited when I saw the lady making something in the kitchen, figuring it was helping her follow the recipe so she wouldn't have to keep glancing at the ingredients and instructions. I watched it later with the sound and was bummed that it was just reminding her about an appointment. When it can do the recipe thing, I will be sold.
None of things featured in that video interest me to the point of wanting to support or buy Jibo. My smartphone can do 99% of that stuff. And, the fact the Jibo can't move from room to room, doesn't make any of those sample ideas useful. That group photo? Wait, Jibo's at the front door! Shit, gotta go get it. I coulda just used my cell phone that's right here in my pocket. Greeting me at the front door and ordering take out? Jibo? Jibo? Oh, shit. I left it in my daughter's room to read her a bedtime story last night. Jibo? And so on. That should've gone ahead and given the thing a Roomba-like base. Then, it could dock and charge itself every night. There's some potential there, but when you pitch something like this, that you want people to think is next-level technology, it shouldn't come off as just a bigger cell phone that I can't put in my pocket.
I got a Roomba. Best $500 I ever spent. That thing cleans like a motherfucker. I never thought a robot would reach the point of actual usefulness instead of just novelty, but this thing is a fucking godsend. All other robots can go fuck themselves until they develop a sentry that protects my yard from hogs with a shotgun for one arm and an AR-15 for another.
That is how skynet gets armed. Because of hogs. Focus: Robots do not interest me until I can get my very own Cherry 2000. When that happens, I will leave the human race to build my own little love shack in the desert.
Maybe I'm just old and cranky, but most of the current technology scares the hell out of me. I was watching 'Vice' and they did a piece on Camden, NJ, right across the bridge - I can see Camden looking out my window. Something like 50% of it is covered by police cameras and 75% is covered by microphones. As we all know, our cell phone calls are logged and recorded. The amount of surveillance that goes on - in the name of 'safety' - absolutely frightens me and while past generations certainly would have done so it is only in current times, with the advent of the computer, that it is realistic to view, record, log and recall almost everything a citizen does. 1984 is no longer fiction, it's a documentary. That scares the bejesus out of me.
Alt-Alt Focus: The advance of social media. I'm not on Facebook because I just don't see the need for it. I joined Linkedin for professional reasons, and holy fuck is it intrusive. It went right into my gmail contact list and asked if I wanted to connect with those people. Because that's not enough, every time I login it asks me for my hotmail, yahoo, and outlook addresses as well. No fucking way I'm giving it that information. It sends me creepy emails like, "Congratulations to so-and-so's 4th anniversary at their company!" It already annoys the shit out of me that if you google my name you can find my address, but other than that the only thing that comes up us my former place of work. As much as I can, I intend to keep it that way.
I think you missed part of the focus that you quoted. So Jibo apparently asked for like $200,000 to get going and received like 2 million or something insane. What the thing really looks like is a robot tablet. You have to move it, but once it there its just does shit for you. If it walked or moved on it's own, I'd definitely fear that thing creeping into my room and watching me it while I sleep. In regards to Social Media, has anyone else read "The Circle" by Dave Eggers?
That Wall-e thing looks gay. Wake me when sexbots arrive that Harrison Ford can't distinguish from the real deal.