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Bill Gates on Robots
mstaj noted that Bill Gates has an article in January edition of Scientific American A Robot in Every Home."Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products. But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when — or even if — this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world."
That was my exact reaction, too. I thought Scientific American generally got input from experts in the field, and Bill Gates does not qualify as an expert in robotics. (I'd argue he doesn't qualify as an expert in Software Engineering, either.) Keep the Bill Gates articles in BusinessWeek and keep Scientific American as a forum for the experts to write layman-accessible articles. And if you want to discuss robotics, visit NREC at CMU, MIT, Honda, or one of the other myriad companies in the US, Japan, and around the world that actually know something on the topic.
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