Slashdot Mirror
Emotional Bonding with Space Probes
bfwebster writes "Space.com has a story on the scientists and technicians working on the Mars rovers, Spirit and Oppotunity--and how they will react when the rovers finally break down, go silent, or otherwise die. Of course, humans becoming emotionally involved with hardware is high on the list of overused science fiction cliches (see I.14), and humans were naming (and anthropomorphizing) their cars long before they started doing it to their computers. Some argue that anthropomorphic design can ease end-user acceptance [PDF], with some interesting results among toys for children. On the other hand, when software manufacturers try to give our computers some 'personality', we tend to vehemently react against it--witness Microsoft's attempts with the much-loathed Bob and Clippy. And when our personal computers are aged or ailing or simply misbehaving, we usually are more than happy to put them out of our misery. So in the case of Spirit and Opportunity, the issue may be the large investment of time, money, and professional credibility in having two semi-autonomous rovers 100 million miles away function correctly. Best quote from the Space.com story: when Spirit, early into its mission, shut down for reasons then unknown, the Spirit mission manager happened to get a phone call from her husband. He asked her how her day had been, and she said, 'Well...I think I'm personally responsible for the loss of a $400 million national asset.' Doncha hate it when that happens?"
I work at a software startup (well, three years old now.) Myself and one other person created the only product we sell. As most startups, we continue on the edge financially and the future is unclear. If we go under, I will be very, very sad to see it disappear.
[See comment at top of page]
Jinx! You owe me a coke!
_____
A lot less than I did with M$ products, but only because we are in the process of migrating away from them to OpenOffice, and it takes so damn long to export things OUT of the various M$ formats (Outlook folders, address books, etc all that need to be exported to something sane). The best part is when I go to export something from Outlook and it complains it needs the CD to install the exporting software (and it has to be the same CD it was installed from, i.e. Windows 2000 Office Professional, but the standard version won't work, and the Outlook 2000 CD won't work, and so now we are hunting for the Professional CD that came with the machine so we can install the exporting junk so we can hurry and wipe Windows off the machine). Wow that was a long rant.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Or does anyone else think that that My Real Baby doll by Hasbro looks kinda scarey ?