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Japanese Robot on Diplomatic Tour
baquiano writes "Inaugurating 21st century diplomacy, Japan's Pime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is visiting Prague this week, accompanied by Honda's experimental humanoid robot, Asimo. According to this story, Asimo even attended the official dinner. Apparently, the Czech Prime Minister Spidla has often been criticized because he's too 'stiff' and 'robot-like.'" Uncomfortable moments aside, it's a fitting tribute, for as stated in the story, the Czech writer Karel Capek was the first to use the term robot.
I find it comical that a post like this will be modded to informitive. The author just states something totally stupid and posts the text of the article.
The Television Wiki
I think I can. From what I've learned during my stay in Japan, it seems that the Japanese attraction to technology is actually pretty normal thing. This leads me to believe that it's Americans and Europeans that are an "abomination" in this regard. Westerners do not think about the future enough and while there might be hundreds of robotics research programs in the US universities, the general public doesn't have a clue. Not so in Japan. And also, while in the US sci-fi is a prerogative of a relatively well educated minority, in Japan it's much more widespread (I am not talking here about the number of readers or book circulation numbers, but about the prevalence of certain sci-fi ideas in the national menthality).
A similar example is the issue of GM-food. The question is not why Americans are so advanced that they eat it, the real question is why Europeans are so backwards and stupid that they don't.
Being scared of progress is not a normal thing today, in the XXI century. Embracing it is normal and in general beneficial for the societies that do it.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Who knows? I'm in a exchange program there right now, and for as much as I was interested in Japan before coming here, I find that the more I learn about its culture, the less I understand about it. :-) (btw, I'm not american either)
;-) (btw are there "robots" more ancient than those anywhere?)
But talking to a friend of mine in the same program, one good trait of these folk seems to be that they're never afraid to try new things, no matter how strange they are, and I'm not talking only about technology. (embracing them after trying is a whole new matter though)
Anyway, as an interesting sidenote, robotics in eastern asia goes a long way back in time, in a way. In ancient China (~ third century) a great general of the time employed contraceptions in the shape of cows to transport supplies. Maybe those robot making folks are descendants of Zhuge Liang?
Claus