At the entrance to an LAX restaurant stands a white robot with a round head, eyeballs with red sensors, blue eyes that blink in cute humanoid fashion as the head swivels to find its audience while it answers questions two kids about its same size ask by pressing a dozen or so prompts in the android\u2019s chest. The kids are totally enthralled. Not so much by the voiced answers — they got gizmos and devices galore that do that — but by the creature\u2019s white plastic androgynous physical self. It\u2019s practically one of them.<\/p>\n
The kids\u2019 dad catches me watching this futuristic scene and we lock eyes momentarily and both smile. Kids, ya know? Cute. I wonder if he\u2019s thinking what I\u2019m thinking: it won\u2019t be long, couple of years maybe, and they\u2019ll have the real thing, a thinking talking responsive version, a parental substitute, a pet, a playmate, a helper, a babysitter, a counselor, a friend, all of the above. Cute.<\/p>\n
Not too far back we had Chatty Cathy, pull the string in her back and she\u2019d croak out a few inane comments. Even had one doll that would wet herself, if I remember right, so odd now I wonder if I\u2019ve conjured a fake memory. Who wants a doll that pisses itself?<\/p>\n
The robots aren\u2019t going to piss their pants. If they even wear pants. Or clothes. They\u2019re going to make us love them. We already love our smartphones and they aren\u2019t cute, just useful, although watching 90% of my fellow airport travelers thumbing the gizmos, I\u2019d say they\u2019ve become indispensable, babysitters for the bored. Not too hard a leap to our own personal android, a smarty pants without pants, turning on the lights, adjusting the thermostat, playing our favorite tunes, using its GPS to give us directions from the backseat of the car, tucking us in at night, locking the doors and activating the alarm systems, doing our banking, dialing phone numbers, cooking dinner, cleaning the toilet. Permanent companion. Sex slave too, I\u2019m betting, for those who can afford the premium price. <\/p>\n
Those two kids have seen the future. Just not very much of it. Dad and me? Probably we\u2019ve seen more than we wanted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the entrance to an LAX restaurant stands a white robot with a round head, eyeballs with red sensors, blue eyes that blink in cute humanoid fashion as the head swivels to find its audience while it answers questions two kids about its same size ask by pressing a dozen or so prompts in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1683,1684],"class_list":["post-11347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-robots-for-kids","tag-the-androids-are-here"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11348,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11347\/revisions\/11348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}