| Perhaps all of us have our own idea of why, exactly, we found The Jetsons' Rosie useful and appealing. For myself, the appeal is removing the need for a human to do any sort of physical grunt work to perform a task. With software, I still have to open a browser tab and punch in dates, times, and locations on a webpage. I still have to physically go to the grocery store [1] and redeem the coupons I've purchased. How about software that takes my email exchange, extracts the agreed-upon travel dates, books the cheapest ticket, and automatically prints out my boarding pass? Ah, it was all software until the printer - robot. Or something that mines the types of foods and groceries I like, orders them for me, and delivers them to my doorstep? As a grocery store manager, I might want a robot to pick the products off the shelf and transport them to the customer. I can't Babelfish a conversation I'm trying to have with a friend. I want those translators that they have on Star Trek. Hardware. Hardware which runs software, sure, but how am I supposed to translate Chinese using Babelfish on my cell phone? I still have to physically scrub and place the dishes from the kitchen sink into the dishwasher. Hell, I even have trouble getting them from my desk to the sink! So I say let's have more robots! But not robots that substitute for human interaction, but robots that keep us from the monotony of everyday tasks. [1] http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallac... |