Back to basics October 1, 2006
Posted by Niels in : Personal , trackbackDeparting from my current routine of patronizing girl-friendly venues, I decided to return to my roots this morning to attend the sausagefest that is Wired magazine’s Nextfest. If the point of the expo was to portray the world of the future, it fell a little short. But if the point of the expo was to say, “Look at the cool, impractical stuff we can do with technology!” it did a pretty damn good job.
I particularly enjoyed the video game that digitized me and let me punch George Bush in the face.
The most disconcerting part of the expo were the humainoid robots. Although they weren’t intelligent and their movements were prerecorded, they were incredibly lifelike. There was one whose face was running through the gauntlet of human emotions, and another who was standing and moving around. They were real enough that they could have passed me on the street and I wouldn’t have picked them out. Watching them, all I could think about was the fact that if you peeled back their synthetic skin, you’d expose hundreds of metal actuators. The thought is unsettling. If the line between human and machine is blurring now, what is going to happen fifty years from now?
Comments»
punching george bush in the face. thats a terrific thought.
regardless, it seems that technology keeps kicking my butt. i have a cellphone shop & i keep having to relearn all these new gadgets with bluetooth. bluetooth buds. stereo bluetooth. blah blah. it seems so repetitive with only slight differences
robots is a whole other field. i can’t imagine seeing a humanoid robot. I would probably freak out just like I did when I saw I, Robot. *I mainly think it was the fact that they were treating the older robots so badly :(*
In fifty years, I plan to have a machine that controls my house, as featured in a Halloween Simpsons episode, Season 6? With Pierce Brosnans voice.
Or more realistically, I would have a laptop that has a battery that never has to be charged. Perhaps a bubblebath soap that lasts more than 3 grape-scented minutes.
Something along those lines
=) .v.