Our "pal", the Robot. Yeah, right!

Robots shmoe-bots.... what are we gonna do about robots.

No, not this guy "Zeke" here, nor humanoid or metal men, as we all saw in the movies, but automated vir(tu)al systems that replicate humans in some way or another.


You know in some ways Phil Dick got it right... we're creating these homeostatic simulacra... "virtual people"... or virtual workers (and robot comes from the Polish word for worker, don'cha know) ....anyway, simulated "people" who do stuff, but they're kinda dumb and don't know what they're doing, because they're not alive as such, so it's kind of like a bad tape loop playing over and over... but like in Phils' story "Second Variety"... ultimately, they'll overwhelm us by force of numbers and our tendency to anthropomorphize anything that moves.


Spam and voice-mail hell are two examples just off the top of my head... BAD ROBOTS...or for example the automated payment system at my file service provider, that sends me email that they've GOT my payment, and will process it SHORTLY?!? *ARGH!* Robots, gumming people up and wasting our time, you and me and everyone else too... i'm sure there are LOTS more examples.....



....but with the benifit of hindsight, i sure do wish we had more of the Asimo/Roomba type on the marketplace... they at least seem to be more positive and definitely way less intrusive. This kind of robot i like, and i can't see why we don't have more automated machines to do stuff people are unwilling or unable to do. Instead i get mail about hot chicks that want to meet, real estate and stock market scams and deals on viagra. ....oh well......