I’m so glad that someone has finally come up with a robot that does something constructive. Now if only it didn’t keep chatting away in an annoyingly chirpy Japanese voice while it did it. I can also see a few other problems with the design, but hey, who am I to begrudge genius 😉
Now with tounge out of cheek, every time I see something like this, I get really ticked off. Mostly because this stuff has to get disposed of at some stage, and already there are problems with consumer waste such as TVs, computers etc. Whatever about recycling it at the end of its life (I give it about two weeks before the novelty wears off – almost as long as Billy Bass the singing fish), but this stuff has a huge carbon footprint in its manufacture.
How many {dead dinosaurs|trees} does it take to pour a beer?
Stuff is a lot like food. Once we had very little, so having it was something desirable. Now we have far too much. Paul Graham has written a fantastic essay on this topic.
When I moved countries, it was with one large backpack, a suit bag and one piece of hand luggage that contained a camera, an mp3 player, my laptop and travel documents. Free yourself. Avoid stuff.