A Chicken In Every Pot, A Robot In Every Home

Palm Addict writes "The New York Times report that "South Korea, the world's most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72 percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.""

Comments

Re:Robots?

[mshiltonj]

A woman who refuses to pick up her dog's crap after it takes a dump on the subway *deserves* to humiliated.

If a dog craps on the carpet, you rub his nose in it. If a dog craps on the subway, and the owner doesn't pick it up, you rub *her* nose in it.

Built for speed

[fbrchnl2112]

That South Korean robot can run slightly faster than I can. That ought to count for something. fbr

Roomba

[mccalli]

How timely. I bought my first home robot on Saturday, a Roomba vacuuming robot. It's working superbly, and am very happy with the frankly mindless job its doing having been transferred from either myself or my wife and over to a machine instead.

What I find interesting is that I have three kids, the eldest being four. They're going to grow up in a house where it's not considered unusual to have a robot pootling about the place doing domestic chores, whereas to my generation (I'm 34) that's still a "hey, cool!" thing. Nobody says "hey cool, you've got a washing machine!" anymore, at least no-one in the developed world (I'm in the UK).

I'm hoping that the Roomba is just the start of a number of domestic robots. I wouldn't mind one that could wash windows for example, both internal and external. Or a polishing robot. Or a mail-gaethering robot*, or preferable one robot capapble of doing all of it.

I would imaginethat by the time my kids are 34, domestic robots will be so common that even the phraseology will seem absolete. Sort of like your granny talking about the 'wireless', meaning something utterly different to what you mean by the wireless. They'd just be part of the normal experience of daily life. By getting kids used to the idea that there's nothing special about having a robot, such a day is hastened. And my floors get cleaned as well.

Cheers,
Ian
(*Forget the mail-gathering robot from the Hitchhiker's adventure game. I know about the mail-gathering robot from the Hitchhiker's adventure game. Damned babel fish machine...)

Would you want your sister to marry one?

[wsanders]

Really it all boils down to one question. I don't see any problem here.

- I wouldn't mind if my sister married an ATM, for example, it would be really easy to beat him at poker and I'd have all the cash I wanted.

- And what's the problem with "Dog Poop Girl"? She needed the humiliation.

- And what's wrong with organizing mass demonstrations by IM? Already happens everywhere.