The Digital Consultant: humor

Monday, 3 June 2013

A Much Admired Feat Of Engineering!

The creative potential of mankind is sometimes wondrous to behold.

This advertising development in Puerto Rica by fast food chain Burger King adds a new dimension to the concept of "wearable tech".

By this I mean that there is a distinct possibility that every 'Tech' on the planet will want one of these hands-free burger munchers.

Or, if you are more of an outdoors person, you can always trim the hedge or walk the dog wearing one. No chance of the sauce oozing on to the side-walk with this little beauty.

Creativity-Online reports that it was DLC/Ogilvy & Mather who dreamed up the "Hands Free Whopper." "50 of these were handed out to members of the fast feeder's loyalty program".

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Life In (With) A Vacuum

Feeling lonely? Talk to your vacuum cleaner. I am serious.... Korean makers LG have recently released details of their Roboking, a robot vacuum cleaner.

Saying "Sit!" to a dog is bad enough but shouting "Suck!" in an authoritative tone to a vacuum cleaner could well be misinterpreted by your neighbours.

You need to clap your hands twice to get the wretched thing to stop its activities so practising a bit of hi-tech Morris dancing wouldn't go amiss.

"Moreys daunce" by the way is believed to have had its very early origins in the European Courts of the 16th Century, and possibly also has a reference to Moorish practices, although the evidence is patchy. What we do know for sure is that there is no Asian tradition of men putting knotted handkerchiefs on their heads and dancing round in a circle.

But putting Artificial Intelligence to practical use is very much an Asian tradition. Samsung Electronic also has a voice activated vacuum cleaning robot called the New Smart Tango - note the dance reference in its title.

And while the Korean have been cleaning up with their robots, the Japanese have been training theirs as pets.

Who can forget the embryonic "Tamagotchi"; a handheld digital pet which graced our shelves in the 1990's. We have come a long way from key chain-sized virtual pets that "age". Later models of the Tamagotchi even had a final 'seniors' mode. Presumably this state occurred before they were eventually buried at the back of someone's drawer, completely forgotten as the next tech craze took over.

NEC has a personal robot called "PaPeRo"('Partner-type Personal Robot') which has face recognition and detection. It also has the ability to make a mental notes of your preferences as well as being able to walk, talk ( about 200 words) and master a whole range of human expressions. And yes, it too can dance!

The PaPeRo Robot

Nidhal Guessoum who is an associate dean at the American University of Sharjah believes that:

"We are indeed at a crucial moment in human history: Artificial intelligence threatens to produce machines that will surpass us in too many ways; genetic engineering threatens to “upgrade” humans, which may perhaps help us compete with robots. Technology will soon challenge our ethics, indeed our whole sense of humanness".

He may well be correct in this assumption but think of the money we will save in pet food.