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In Japan, Old People Talk to Robots
stupidfoo writes "AFP is reporting that, starting today, "Japan's growing elderly population will be able to buy companionship in the form of a 45-centimeter (18-inch) robot" designed to help them avoid senility. The robot, named Snuggling Ifbot and developed by Dream Supply, will be able to respond to verbal commands. "If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"". It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars) and there is no English version currently available but "its makers plan to program the robot in English -- not for export, but to teach the language to Japanese children.""
Should I:
a) Weep for the millions of human tragedies that must have taken place to lead so many to this extreme of loneliness and general patheticness, or...
b) Laugh because it's called 'Snuggling Ifbot'?
Eh, I'll go for b). Hee hee hee... 'snuggling ifbot'... hee hee hee...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
How will it push anyone down the stairs?
Sounds like a 5600$ version of Eliza.
I don't need a signature.
Great name to go senile with. That's the kind of name I want around when I'm 85 and dribbling, "you seen the snuggling ifbot today son?"
In Japan, sanity is talking to a robot called Snuggly Ifbot :-/
sig under construction...
but how could this possibly be used to combat the onset of senility?
Studies have shown that passively sitting around not talking to anyone all day doesn't exactly help your brain keep in shape. (You have to exercise it, you know? Seriously.)
.: Max Romantschuk
in which case I really need to move out of my nice quiet server room and interact with the rest of my office - before one day ............
where am I... why have I got no pants on...
In America, Old people get shot by shotgun toting robots.
You're either seriously misinformed, too lazy to look up the real facts or just trolling actually. While Japan is certainly far from perfect, this is a totally unfair attack.
It's called Hikikomori so you can look up more info on it. Yes there are a million teens who have this problem, but there are many millions who don't. The problem isn't considered a disease (at least not yet), and the problems that trigger it are problems that occur elsewhere as well. From this site: "For reasons ranging from bullying to exam failure, some young people are shutting themselves away in their rooms and having as little direct contact with the outside world as possible. Many are suicidal, but lack the will to make good their morbid fantasies." From what I've read (in the past, can't find the exact links right now) it's a combination that generally causes it. It's not just bad grades or bullying, but a combination of those and/or other factors. Faced with that kind of pressure kids in any country are going to have trouble dealing with it. In fact, China and Korea have problems with high teen suicide rates (just like Japan) largely due to all three placing such importance on doing well on school. If China and Korea aren't seeing problems similiar to Hikikomori yet, they will in the future.
As for why the US doesn't, well kids here by and large don't give a damn if they do well in school so that's one less pressure to trigger something like this. But we do have bullying in schools, in spades in fact, and we have nothing to be proud of in the results it can cause, remember Columbine? What's sad is we didn't really learn anything from that tragedy, the initial response was to ban wearing black trenchcoats and to target teens with similar interests to the two instigators for further scrutiny. What needs to be done is to focus on the kids who are the bullys and punish them for bullying others. Until bullying, which is the root problem, is addressed other incidents like Columbine are likely to happen. I hope I'm wrong there, but I doubt it.
On please, you know absolutely nothing about manga. Yeah there is tentacle rape stuff, but it's just a drop in the sea. Japan produces comics for all ages, and they're quite popular. It's everywhere, and most of it is decidedly NOT pedophilic or tentacle rape. And of the stuff that is, as another pointed out it's not necessarily pedophilic, it's cultural issues that lead to the creation of it. (And BTW, the US has some blame in that, we're the ones who applied the first anti-obscenity laws to Japan post WWII.)
At least they're trying to do something about the problem, exacly what are we doing here in the US? At best we're building more nursing homes to stuff the elderly into so we can forget them. Hardly a higher moral ground.
What say you buck the general American trend of presuming you know everything about a country you've not even been to and stop acting all high and mighty when you're clueless. While Japan isn't perfect, neither is the US and in the grand scheme of things the US probably has more to be ashamed of. We also have our share of crippling psychological problems, you just don't appear to be aware of them either. (Do you even watch/read the news?) Depression is becoming epidemic and one of the top prescription drugs people get busted for having is Xanax. Xanax isn't a narcotic, it's an anti-anxiety medication.
And frankly when it comes t