I just watched a film classic - one I'd been meaning to watch for some time but had sat on the shelf, still wrapped in cellophane and three sides of tape, ever since Christmas when my dad got it for me. Dad and I always liked to watch movies together, could spend whole days watching movies and talking about them and then deciding what to watch next. We weren't particular - any movie would do. One of the last times I spent with him, we watched a sort of triple feature, beginning with Pitch Black and ending with The Chronicles of Riddick. If it was loud and fun and had special effects and great one-liners, we were happy. Even Vin Diesel couldn't ruin our good time. But we also liked those Great Films, the ones that Say Something.
Dad loved science fiction. He grew up on the greats - on radio with Flash Gordon and the Avenger, and then on television Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, and of course comic books and sci-fi novels. He taught a course on Ethics at Lewis & Clark College using sci-fi novels. He loved Star Trek and Star Wars; he even seemed to believe in The Force, and didn't let George Lucas's silly blood tests for Jedis get in his way. A lot of times, it was these sorts of movies that Said Something. It seemed easier to explore interracial relationships and nuclear war and racism and sexism and anti-semitism and hunger and disease and fear on a spaceship or in the future. Science fiction is about allegories. It's about exploring our many demons and our better angels and prompting us all to think about what we really believe, and what we really believe in.
I felt, still feel, like he and I were the same person. I wish I knew more about him - it might help me understand myself better. But I think that's the trouble with death. Someone goes and you suddenly can think of all the things you wish you'd asked, but never thought of as urgent or pressing. Everything is urgent now. So today, I opened the wrapper on that film classic, and I popped it into the DVD player and I watched. Gentleman's Agreement is about a journalist who poses as a Jew in order to write about anti-semitism. It attempts to tackle, through only one of our many societal diseases, what it really means to be human - or at least it endeavors to show that flesh is flesh, after all. And it shows that we all begin to buy in to notions of good and bad, same and different, right and wrong - as though they were ideas made concrete, something you can sink someone's feet into before you toss them off the bridge. But it also demonstrates how much we accept the worst of the world around us. We let the tasteless joke go by. We believe that others are better than we are. We cut ourselves off from what life is, after all - messy and imperfect and dirty and often simply amoral. We so often want to be 'better' that we invent degrees of betterness and then include ourselves or exclude ourselves based on our own ideas of our self-worth.
And it's all a bunch of nonsense anyway. Not everything can or should be explained. Sometimes you hurt because you simply do. Because all this is hard. Because we're doing this instead of something we want to do more, because we don't know ourselves very well and we think we know what we want until it's right on top of us and we want it to go away. Because we know we want something but don't know how badly we really need it until it's slipping away from us.
In many ways, then, this whole thing is for my Dad, about whom I can't stop crying.
So I leave you with this - it's a lovely little story, and yes, it involves a robot. Unfortunately, it's an ad for detergent.
i only started this blog a week ago - and it has worked to inspire friends of mine who would ordinarily never admit an interest in such things to notice robots and robot-like things just about everywhere. and of course i've started to notice them in more places than just my google reader feed. as it's sunday, and it was a slightly rough weekend of my own making, i think i'll refrain from undue philosophizing and just show you what people sent me...
robot sheet sets at Pottery Barn Kids, courtesy of my friend Cagney.
finally, i noticed these robots just walking around the city the last few days. this one i noticed on 1st avenue around 4th street on the side of a mailbox.
and this one carved into the sidewalk in williamsburg.
Look at that monkey, feeding itself what looks to be some delicious pastry with a robotic arm that it controls WITH ITS MIND. To wit, from the BBC:
With the probes inserted into the monkeys' motor cortices, computer software was used to interpret the brain's electrical impulses and translate them into movement through the robotic arm.
With a bit of training, the monkeys could change speed and direction. The scientists speculate the monkeys began to regard the prosthetic limb as their own, after first observing the movement and then, by observing, activating brain cells that send the appropriate signal.
There are two aspects of this I find fascinating - first, the potential application for those with spinal cord injuries or for amputees. The second was this observation from the same article:
However, this important paper confirms that the brain controls movement just by planning where to go, rather than by directing individual muscles how to make the limb get there.
This calls to mind some arguments made by psychologists and sociologists - and of course amateurs of both who make their livings in the ad business - that we decide before we know that we've decided, and that we typically act in simple mimicry of others. Perhaps I just can't give up the free will ghost, but it seems to me that this robot monkey experiment actually shows that there are multiple, yet nearly instantaneous, aspects of decision-making. Planning and directing and acting can all happen so simultaneously as to be nearly impossible to disentangle. But, arguably, the 'true' decision happens at the moment just before we plan.
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:
from meme huffer look at this poor bot. offering to process data for energy. that's how you know that we're in a recession and an energy crisis.
don't you just feel his pain? when it's 10am on monday and you're already wondering when the weekend will come because that's when you can get off the hamster wheel and do some other totally soul-destroying thing like, say, drink to excess in a freezing cold bar in billsburg, you are just inches away from donning a helmet and putting out a little sign. trust me.
That's how many pairs of shoes I own. Many of them, frankly, need to be retired and replaced. But I love them so - especially the pink and lavender ones with the cool brushed metal piece on the heel. Perhaps I'll take those in to the Cowboy Boot Hospital to have the little divots in the heels replaced and the toes buffed up and shined. Maybe new suede lining put in... Pardon me as I fantasize about refurbishing my shoes...
I used to stop into Otto Tootsi Plohound when I lived in Union Square. I called it the Art Store. Pretty, pretty shoes. Mostly unaffordable to me. But I did love to look. Nowadays I'm too busy to go into an actual shoe store, so I wind up using the Internets to satiate my shoe cravings. And Zappos is definitely a great way to go. Multiple views of the shoe itself, descriptions of the fit and comfort, reviews by others who've bought the same pair giving advice on whether to size up or down, how well a boot fits around the amply-calved, and whether the heel is sturdy enough to make it through a night of dancing on beer slicked tables at German Mardi Gras. I have purchased many a shoe from Zappos, especially last summer when my Michael Kors fetish was in full effect (this year it's Corso Como, baby!).
I mean, come on people, check these beauty booties!
I heart them.
However, while they are indeed gorgeous, they are not much robot-like. I mean, except insofar as metallic booties can take you in the direction of some sex kitten robot from the future. You know, like the Svedka robotrix:
But WERE YOU AWARE that Zappos serves up their shoes using actual, bona fide robots?!?! Well, were you?!?!
The Kiva Mobile Fulfillment System from Massachusetts-based Kiva Systems, is basically a team of autonomous, stout, orange robots that sort, store, and move inventory in warehouses. The robots essentially bring the assembly line to the warehouse worker to fill orders more quickly.
Instead of having people walking around a warehouse with a cart and looking for ordered items to put into boxes, the robots automatically bring the items to them.
I love the thought of a shoe warehouse in Kentucky, buzzing with the hum of an efficient, orange, robot army. And now that I've spent the last twenty minutes or so looking on Zappos, I have come t this conclusion: Oh, Michael Kors, prince of American sportswear, you do make a fine lookin' shoe! I think I may need those robots to fetch me some sassy pumps! Fetch, bot, fetch!
and this robot dog is gonna kick dr. who's arse at chess, yo!
from meme huffer
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