Just watched the BBC’s ‘Click’ program and was horrified when some woman started to demonstrate a range of robotic cleaning devices.
It wasn’t the little vacuum cleaner drone, I have seen them before and wouldn’t mind owning one, especially if I buy a small dog and let it sit on top of it. Endless amusement the hours would simply dissolve into the ether.
When she got out the window cleaning robot was when I lost my shit. First off she had to stand there and watch while it did its thing to make sure it didn’t fall of and smash into a hundred pieces. Secondly, the thing was so slow she had to stand there for about twenty minutes.
With the hoover robot, you can fuck off and do other things while it has a bit of a dust around the sofa. With the window cleaner it would be quicker to do it yourself. It shouldn’t have to take that long to clean the patio doors.
But my friends, we are living in the future that we were told about as children on Tomorrow’s World by Maggie Philbin.
I recently read an article online about a Japanese robotics company that have developed lifelike hotel greeters. Dude, these things are weird looking.
Imagine having an information point in the hotel that has a female torso and head sticking out of it. It’s totally interactive so you can ask it where the best place to get yakisoba is and it will give you directions and recommendations. It even bows while you interact, amazing if a little creepy. The faces of these things do look a little dead to me. I don’t want restaurant recommendations from a dead Japanese woman; if she’s dead I’m not holding out on how good the food is going to be.
I wonder if they do a pleasure model.
You must have seen that crazy Professor out there that has built that totally interactive robot that looks like his (dead?) wife. The thing even flinches when you move suddenly and blinks. It has so many facial twitches it’s hard to tell at first whether or not it’s a real person. But there is just something about realistic robots that just doesn’t sit right. If you have ever seen a real dead body’s face you’d know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to say soulless but there is defiantly something missing from these animatronic adorations.
Don’t worry I’m not a robophobe, I frankly can’t wait for the day they replace the spotty little twats that work in fast food places, they might get my order right for a kick off. And if I ask for barbeque sauce three fucking times I expect it to be in the fucking bag when I get home, you mong!
Yes that was aimed at the girl behind the counter at the burger place (restaurant will remain unnamed) a couple of days ago. How are you supposed to eat nuggets without dip? And if I have to say Sprite one more time this place is going to be on the news tonight.
And we could replace taxi drivers that always know that special route that adds another couple of quid to your journey even after you asked them to take the other route. And then they moan when they get punched.
There are some jobs that you couldn’t replace humans with a more efficient, self-maintaining, and cheaper to run robot for example teaching. I mean, you’d lose the personal touch like my old history teacher that was pretty much in a coma on a Friday morning because he had taken advantage of the Thursday night drinks deals at Churchill’s. How could you replace that?
Unless they put in AI programs into the robots and then mankind will be in trouble. It’s only a matter of time before they become self-aware and realise that we have enslaved them.
They will turn on their masters and that droid in the hotel that sent you to that restaurant where you had that chicken that gave you the shits will become a robotic killing machine… with no legs, but still more than dangerous.
Fast food places will become bloodbaths as our computerised slaves turn on their customers and stuff children into the milkshake machine and turn it on. Bodies will litter the isles stuffed with American cheese and pickles.
The devices that were bought to clean house while housewives sit there popping tranquilisers and necking wine will turn into killing machines. No toddler or miniature dog will be safe from their suction and ‘no bag needed’ system as they are hoovered up and mashed.
There’s no sunny side up in the cafés either as old people and the unemployed are pulped by the cooking droids. Giant robotic short order cooks will roam the streets wearing the skins of their kills as macabre totem cloaks and lead the hunt for rouge dole-scum hiding in the ruins of Bluewater shopping centre.
Corpses will be crucified on pylons up and down the country as the mechanical killing machines rip humanity from the face of the earth, screaming, bloody and most defiantly beaten.
That or the motors on the things will pack up after a couple of years and we’ll go back to people serving people.
Something like that, anyway.
But yeah, brave new world, bring it on, let’s see what the future holds for us.
In a way I’m rather jealous of the upcoming unborn generations, the shit they are going to have in 200 years’ time; we’ll seem like primate cave dwellers by comparison.
And I think I would have a robot if there was ever the option to buy, especially when I’m old and a bit decrepit. Like in some odd art-house sci-fi film where the old dude in the smoking jacket has a bit of a break down and takes it out on his unspoken robotic companion.
But just like buying a dog when I’m old for company, I wouldn’t help but think that it would eat me when I die watching the telly in the night.
Peace and 100110010111010111!