i've taken to twittering. and then gareth kay pointed out that don draper, the lead character of the AMC show "Mad Men" is also twittering. so i followed his tweets, and now he's following mine, and so is peggy olsen, and so is betty and so is salvatore and it's just so much to follow! i'm not even sure if it's linked to the show, and there seems to be office intrigue that's going on in the twitterverse but not on the screen and it's just really so much big geek fun. i heart it the heartiest.
and then i put up a simple tweet about trying to combine don draper and robots. a simple dream, from a simple girl.
the other day, on the plane to dallas, i caught up on mad men - a show i find so resplendent, so detestable, so delicious in its period accuracy that i can't turn away. i noticed two important things.
i'm a better tv viewer on a plane with my iPhone then i am at home. i actually watch the show instead of also checking email or also reading my googlereader feeds or also playing mah-jongg.
don draper destroyed a robot. little bobby was playing with the robot at the dinner table and he knocked over sally's glass with the robot and betty went apeshit and don, fed up with the day and probably most of his life, picked up the robot and dashed it against the kitchen wall. i have one word for this: hot.
i did some searching for the robot. i didn't get a good look at it before it met its unfortunate end, but i think this might be it... you see, robots are for everyone. i bet i could work some serious symbolism out of that robot - robot as symbol of labor, lack of free will, oppression, slavery. a mere plaything to a child, but a tyrant to a man. who keeps don draper down? only himself. when his wife tries to submit him to her will, force upon him decisiveness and authority to overwhelm her own parental defects (and what's with her total resentment of the kid?), he rebels, grasps the idol of his own slavery and demolishes it like some golden calf. i think this means that don draper is moses.
hi there - coming at you LIVE from the westin buckhead in beautiful, muggy atlanta. i just had linguine in white clam sauce - frankly, too much linguine. safely back in my hotel room, i unbuttoned my jeans and heaved a deep sigh and turned to the ever-trusty google to do my robot bidding. what was the most newsworthy connection between robots and atlanta, i wondered?
well, back in april, the FIRST robotics championship was held here in the georgia dome. to get a sense of the competition, you can search for it on youtube, or just check this out:
chris anderson, blogging on geek dad over at wired filed a report about his adventures there, though he was more enamored of his LEGO Mindstorms UAV. go ahead and read the comments section - i dare you.
the description of the competition is pretty inspiring:
FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a unique varsity sport of the mind designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be.
The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals.
FIRST redefines winning for these students because they are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and the ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. Winning means building partnerships that last.
(all bolds mine)
judging by the topics at the FIRST robotics championship conference, robots truly are for everyone, though this competition focuses on high school students. there were the sorts of uber-geek topics you'd expect:
Building and sustaining a community robotics program
Overall robot design & strategy
Integrating design & engineering concepts to the robot development process
Pneumatic power concepts
Omni-directional drive systems
and then there were some topics that spoke to a higher social and cultural calling - and a real desire to integrate more kinds of people into the robot clan:
Leadership basics
Motivating yourself and your team members
The benefits of the FLL program for children with cancer
And what about minority kids?
Women in engineering: recruitment challenges and responses
FIRST scholarships: how will you pay for college?
but of course, not to be outdone by the other geeks in school - you know, the ones who will be writers and designers when they grow up - they also offered a few topics near and dear to a marketing geek's heart:
Lights, camera, action: video journaling for robotics
Animation: ideation to creation
Blogs, podcasts and community service: extending the FLL theme beyond competition
and so on...
(at first i wasn't sure of the lingo, but FLL stands for FIRST Lego League - a similar competition for younger kids (aged 9-14) to get them interested in science and engineering.)
most of my computer time these days is spent in front of powerpoint, google, youtube, flickr, facebook, blogger and twitter - but there was a day when i was definitely into the science of it all and sometimes rolled up my sleeves and got elbow deep in the guts of a computer or rocket or whatever. my parents put me and my brother in classes at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and i still think what i learned there was useful. even the driest bit of physics or chemistry or (obviously) robotics has a creative, storytelling side to it.
anyway, it's late and i haven't that much to say except congratulations to the winners, and that this is a fantastically worthwhile program that more kids should get involved in - if nothing else, it looks like great fun.
i realize that title is desperately lame, but i'm tired and i exceeded my 1 drink maximum because the conversation was good. my bad.
but hey, check it: robotic fish that can communicate and form schools.
apparently, this is potentially very useful for tracking oceanic pollution or marine life, but the most important part of this video comes when the aussie calls them, "fishy robots" entirely unironically.
it's not that impressive, though. at my parent's house, they had robotic fish that could form schools. and these were so cool, someone made an ad for them. here they are:
and then, while i was looking for something to illustrate my point, i found something fairly entertaining, albeit with nothing robotic (except perhaps these kids' acting -snap!):
I live in Brooklyn. Carroll Gardens. Previously known simply as South Brooklyn. A neighborhood known for longshoremen, Italians, bakeries, soppresatta, lawn chairs and funeral homes. Or at least, known to me for these qualities. Actually, the neighborhood is known for having both front and back gardens for each brownstone. The Los Angeles Times (via Gothamist) did a nice little video ... here it is:
Brooklyn used to be a place to get more square footage for less money. Manhattanites moved out to the 718 and brought their Maclaren strollers, enrolled in prenatal yoga at Area, overwhelmed the farmers market in Grand Army Plaza and generally overpopulated the place to the extent that the F train is always crowded and usually painfully late. I'm one of them, sans stroller or prenatal anything. I've been to the farmer's market once. It was nice.
The emblem of all that is yuppie reprehensible in Brooklyn is Park Slope. There's a whole 'thing' brewing over the rising cost of real estate pushing out even the nice folks making a meager six figures. Blog comments are racist and rude, obscenities fly, even those who got off the boat from the East Village three months ago are rallying to the cry of 'there goes the neighborhood.' I like to think that these neighborhoods can be reclaimed by nature (or economics) - grass, trees, weeds all grow up through the cracks in the cement, ivy overtakes mortar and slowly destroys a brick building, and a few well-timed stabbings and shootings on the hipster circuit can reclaim Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Park Slope, and South Brooklyn, rendering it safe only for those brave enough to get off the subway at night. Frankly, it's a bunch of shite. Neighborhoods change - the people who owned those lots and buildings since converted to condos and co-ops made a pretty penny in the process and should take some responsibility for the changes in that neighborhood. They could have kept their Italian longshoremen's families in the nabe, but they wanted to sell out and move out just as much as the yuppies and hipsters were willing to buy in and move in. If they don't stay forever - well, blame the permalancer economy.
I digress. It's also possible that my jet lag is getting the better of my reasoning and sentence construction. So I'll cut to the robot chase - or rather, the robot parade. Some Park Slopians held a robot parade awhile back...
They weren't selling anything. There was no particular purpose to it. It was fun - I'm sorry I missed it. To check out the flickr feed, go here.
I grew up in the 80s. In the 80s we were concerned about the following:
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens - this was the first time we turned to powdered milk and face masks
The Chernobyl disaster - that was the second time... Mmmm... Tang
The Spaceshuttle Challenger disaster - no powdered milk, just a classroom full of shocked 4th graders
The Iran/Contra Hearing - interrupting summer programming and tearing us away from whatever Bo & Hope were doing on Days
AIDS
The hole in the ozone layer - this seemed to be caused by Aquanet, the refrigerator and the air conditioner
Just saying "No" to drugs
Not talking to strangers - this means you, latch-key kids!
Whether there would be a booth in the non-smoking section, and whether you'd have to walk through the smoking section to get to it
When your cable provider would finally carry MTV so you could actually watch videos
Drunks driving oil tankers
And one of the more disgusting worries: baby seals being clubbed to death for their skins
I grew up in Oregon. For those who don't know where it is on the map, you can find it on the Pacific Ocean, between Washington and California. You'd be surprised how many people I meet that aren't quite sure where Oregon is, though they seem to at least correctly assume it's "West". Oregon is regarded as being both a place for redneck, fishermen and lumberjacks who don't like gays, the watershed or the spotted owl; and as a place full of damn dirty hippies who voted for Mondale.
But Oregon is also the home of the Oregon Coast, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, the Seaside Aquarium, the Washington Park Zoo (now called the Oregon Zoo), the Oregon Wildlife Safari, and a town called Seal Beach. What I mean to say is, I saw a fair number of seals in my time. They seemed like slightly pushy, aquatic dogs. Barking at you and clapping water in your direction if you didn't toss that sardine. Swimming right up to the glass to eyeball you and then show off a bit. So to think that someone could club and then skin a baby seal was truly appalling. And, for some reason, oft-discussed in elementary school circles. I don't really remember why.
But, we set to work protecting baby seals, whales, and all the rest of our beloved ocean mammals. They even made a Star Trek movie about it.
(Alright, enough of that!)
So now, baby seals are available to you, in robotic form, to fill the empty void in your soul where love, affection and loyalty ought to be.
It's been available in Japan for several years, but now the company has created a Florida-based unit, Paro Robots U.S. Inc., to sell the fuzzy creature to places like nursing homes and hospitals. The robot, named Paro, is marketed as a therapeutic device that can help comfort people who have dementia, autism or other problems that can lead to social isolation.
Apparently, the robot seal can 'feel' pleasure - when you pet him, he makes the pleased, squealing sound of a real baby seal. It also shivers when you first hold it, until you begin to soothe it - which no doubt contributes to the bond people feel to the 'pet.'
But the article also makes this fascinating observation - because most people don't ever interact with or see a seal in real life, they have low expectations for the look and feel of, and interaction with a robotic seal. We do know what cats and dogs are like, so it's harder to bond with a robotic one of those.
Case in point:
Which seems like an apt observation of humanity in general - while we might fear the unknown, we can also very easily adore the unfamiliar, the untouchable, the out of reach. We yearn from afar. We fall in love at first sight. We link eyes across a crowded room. We covet thy neighbor's wife, or husband. We take snippets of information about complete strangers to us and begin to feel that we have a relationship with them (it's called being a 'fan'). Only when we discover that the object of our arm's-length affections is not quite as we imagined, do we begin to sour on it or him or her. Real relationships are hard - they take care, feeding, shelter, warmth, safety, nurturing, acceptance, struggle, compromise, disagreement, and even punishment in order to be successful. They are long-term propositions. It's no different for owning a 'real' pet - a living, breathing dog or cat requires our affection, and gives back positive reinforcement (well, dogs do, anyway). But it also requires boundaries, training, a sense of belonging, and someone to take on the responsibilities of the administrative aspects of the relationship.
What I'm saying is this: batteries and soft fake fur, long eyelashes and pre-recorded sounds of baby harp seals mewling at their mothers make for a nice 'fake' pet. Still, Paro the baby seal robot is 'real' enough to be loved. And for some, enough really is enough.
Let's bring it back to the robotic, shall we? I find myself fascinated and repulsed by the notion that we're going to give a shivering, squealing animatronic seal to people who are already a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But why would that be? Why am I being a hater of robot pets? Turns out, there is a theory about robotics and animation that is referred to as the Uncanny Valley.
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
For the best explanation of this phenomenon, watch this clip:
i did some searching for the robot. i didn't get a good look at it before it met its unfortunate end, but i think this might be it... you see, robots are for everyone. i bet i could work some serious symbolism out of that robot - robot as symbol of labor, lack of free will, oppression, slavery. a mere plaything to a child, but a tyrant to a man. who keeps don draper down? only himself. when his wife tries to submit him to her will, force upon him decisiveness and authority to overwhelm her own parental defects (and what's with her total resentment of the kid?), he rebels, grasps the idol of his own slavery and demolishes it like some golden calf. i think this means that don draper is moses.
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