We hate robots. Ok, wait, back up. We at least think they are more evil than good. Try it yourself – “are robots” in Google nets you evil before good. Megatron has higher SEO than Optimus Prime, and it’s not just because he’s so much cooler. It cuz he evil, cuz. It do be like that.
It’s not even a compliment to call someone robotic; society connotes this to emotionless preprogrammed shells of hideous nothing, empty clankbags that walk and talk and not much else. So, me at a party. Or if you’re a nerd, you’re a robot. (Me at a party once again.)
Let’s start by assuming robots as human-like bipedal machines that are designed with some amount of artificial intelligence, generally designed to fulfill a job to free up humanity from drudgery. All sounds good so far. So why do they creep us out?
There’s a litany of reasons why, best summed up with the concept of the uncanny valley, first coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori (Wow he’s still alive! The robots have not yet won) in 1970. Essentially, we know what a human is and how it looks and behaves against the greater backdrop of life and physics. When this is translated to a synthetic being, we are ok with making a robot look and act like us to a point, where we then notice all the irregularities and differences.
Most of these are minor – unnaturally smooth or rigid movements, light not scattering properly on a surface, eyes that don’t sync up quite right when they blink, and several other tiny details. Lots of theories take over at this point about why this creeps us out. But a blanket way to think about it is that our expectation doesn’t match what we are seeing; the reality we’re presented with is off just enough and this makes us uncomfortable .
Ever stream a show and the audio is a half second off? Makes you really annoyed. Magnify that feeling by a thousand and you’re smack in the middle of the uncanny valley. It’s that unnerving. One possible term for this is abjection, which is what happens the moment before we begin to fear something. Our minds – sensing incompatibility with robots – know this is something else, something other , and faced with no way to categorize this, we crash.
This is why they make good villains in movies – something we don’t understand and given free will and autonomy, potentially imbued with the bias of a creator or capable of forming terrifying conclusions all on its own (humans are a virus). But they also make good heroes, especially if they are cute or funny. Who doesn’t love C3PO? That surprise that they are good delights us. Build in enough appeal to a robot, and we root for them and feel empathy when they are faced with hardships. Do robots dream of electric sheep? Do robots have binary souls? Bits and zeros and ones?
Professor Jaime Banks (Texas Tech University’s College of Media & Communication) spends a lot of time thinking about how we perceive robots. It’s a complex and multifaceted topic that covers anthropomorphism, artificial intelligence, robot roles within society, trust, inherently measuring virtue versus evil, preconceived notions from entertainment, and numerous topics that cover human-robot interactions.
The world is approaching a future where robots may become commonplace; there are already robot bears in Japan working in the healthcare field. Dressing them up with cute faces and smiles may help, but one jerky movement later and we’ve dropped all suspension.
At some point, we have to make peace with the idea that they will be all over the place. Skynet, GLaDOS in Portal, the trope of your evil twin being a robot that your significant will have to shoot in the middle of your fight, that episode of Futurama where everything was a robot and they rose up against their human masters with wargod washing machines and killer greeting cards, the other Futurama episode where they go to a planet full of human hating murderous robots… We’ve all got some good reasons to fear robots and their coded minds.
But as technology advances, it makes sense to have robots take over menial tasks, perform duties for the needy and sick, and otherwise benefit humanity at large. And so the question we face is how to build that relationship now to help us in the future.
There’s a fine line between making them too humanlike versus too mechanical. Pixar solved the issue of unnerving humanoids in their movies by designing them stylistically – we know they are human and accept that the figure would look odd in real life. We can do the same with robots – enough familiarity to develop an appeal, but not enough to erase the divide between humanity and robot. It may just be a question of time and new generations growing up with robots becoming fixtures of everyday life. I’m down for cyborgs too.
Fearing them might not even be bad, as Banks points out: “…a certain amount of fear can be a useful thing. Fear can make us think critically and carefully and be thoughtful about our interactions, and that would likely help us productively engage a world where robots are key players.”
Also, check out Robot Carnival if you get the chance – specifically the Presence episode of the anthology.
Matt Kelly
November 11, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I can completely related to Dales term “de jour” comments. One of the many questions I’ve pondered over the years as it relates to his thoughts is “I wonder what happened to all of those Y2K Consultants?”
Jay Thompson
November 11, 2010 at 6:06 pm
“I wonder what happened to all of those Y2K Consultants?”
They are all “social media guru’s” now….
hermanchan.com
November 11, 2010 at 1:51 pm
OMfG, it’s NAR’s very own Oscar Wilde. any one who can coherently string together concatination, star trek & betty white has got my vote!
Ken Brand
November 11, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I’m impressed.
Loren Nason
November 11, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I just tell people they should use aggressive processor scaling to achieve unprecedented power consumption reduction in low-use scenarios.
Nadina Cole-Potter
November 11, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I can see why you love Dale! And, BTW, everyone, Betty White’s generation is between mine and my parents’ generation — and I am approaching … Let’s just say I remember my uniformed father and uncles during WWII.
I am still smiling!
Josh Nekrep
November 11, 2010 at 3:26 pm
You know, he really has a point… and my hat’s off to him for saying it.
There’s really two sides to this issue:
1) Social Media and internet tech in general is absolutely changing the way we do things on a day-to-day basis. There’s absolutely no doubting that.
2) Many, many things have “changed the way we do things” before… so many that I’m not sure we need another “revolution”. It simply is what it is. The reason so many of us get so wrapped up in it is because we’re trying so hard to stay ahead of the curve.
On this Remembrance/Veterans Day… maybe it’s time to just take a breath. I’m going to spend my evening being social in a decidedly analog way. 🙂
Jonathan Benya
November 11, 2010 at 3:30 pm
That’s a very well put response. Kudos to Dale for taking the time to write it, although I’m not sure that I agree with his view point.
Yeah, SM is the “in” thing. Yes, it will cease being a buzz word eventually (not soon enough, IMHO). SM cannot be linked in the same “buzz word” category as “system software solutions” and “distributed processing”, however. I think that marketers are going to get a whole lot more mileage out of SM, largely due to the ambiguous nature of what social media really is. I think very few people, relative to the real estate community, fully understand the scope; hell I get it wrong sometimes myself!
Things like the internet are simple. It’s there, you’re on it, or you’re not. SM has a very blurred line. Is reading blogs social media? commenting? writing? Is logging into facebook enough to count, or do I need to talk about real estate for it to qualify.
All of this is made worse, as Herman pointed out, with folks selling “social media frames”, and other quasi-related stuffs that don’t really have a bearing on SM at all. Nobody knows where to get the right answer, yet. Much like the internet took time for real estate, so does social media. My thought is that we all need to be ready to adapt, change, and shift in order to grow and adopt the tools that our clients are already using. At the end of the day, it’s much like any other shift in technology. Throw out your cassettes, learn which end of the CD is up, and keep moving along.
Ken Montville
November 11, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Hey, let’s not forget Tony Bennett. He was the hot thing for the MTV generation just a few years back and now, he’s like, who? Tony was the Betty White of the early 2000s.
But I digress.
The original post talked about the over saturation or bastardizaion of “social media”. Nobu suggested working from the inside to change the convention vendor mix. It’s really two separate issues. Yes. Social media is over used as a term and poorly understood by the masses. Probably because there is no “standard” for social media (as I think Jonathan Benya was pointing to),
The other part was about the mix of vendors on the expo floor. I wasn’t there but I can imagine if someone was selling digital frames as “social media” that it was a real circus. However, I’m not sure that volunteering for one of NAR’s ginormous committees to be the lone voice of reason is a workable solution. Perhaps blogging about it on AG, catching the attention of someone like Nobu and Dale (and others) will create a greater groundswell of, let’s say, intentionality, about who the vendors will be.
Of course, the real deal with vendors is the money. One can’t really be too choosy. The reason snake oil sells is because there are buyers.
Jay Thompson
November 11, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Despite the abundance of “social media this and that” on the expo floor, you know what were consistently the most crowded booths that I walked by?
Those selling purses, scarves and jewelry,
Seriously.
hermanchan.com
November 11, 2010 at 7:41 pm
how can you beat $10 kashmere scarves ?! (yes, cashmere with a K) i bought 5!
Ann Cummings
November 12, 2010 at 6:16 am
Those are always the busiest booths at every convention I’ve ever gone to. I often wonder what happened to the booths that used to see supplies like letterhead, notecards, license plate holders and such – those used to be packed booths, too.
Janie Coffey
November 11, 2010 at 7:02 pm
I am sooooo over hearing people gripe about the words “social media”. People call it that for lack of a better word(s), but the truth is, it’s here to stay. Just like the internet way, email way, texting way. Socal media, networking, new media, whatever you want to call it is no longer the next shiny new object. I fully agree with Dale, the word is overused, but it does not minimize the powerful impact social “whatever you want to call it” is having on our lives. It’s a game changer and as sick as you might be of hearing it, it ain’t going anywhere and I am thankful for Dale’s pragmatic response. More than wanting to “hurl” when I hear social media, I want to “hurl” when I hear someone even bring it up as being tired of hearing it. It is what it is, what’s next? Let’s look for that!
Missy Caulk
November 11, 2010 at 9:51 pm
To quote Jay, “Despite the abundance of “social media this and that” on the expo floor, you know what were consistently the most crowded booths that I walked by?
Those selling purses, scarves and jewelry,”
and to add my own…QR Codes, everywhere.
Matthew Rathbun
November 11, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Did we get upset at the phrase the “web”? I’m proud of Dale for engaging AG. I wish all the Association Exec’s would be so engaging.
Ann Cummings
November 12, 2010 at 6:18 am
Matt – I don’t think most know how.
Teresa boardman
November 12, 2010 at 8:30 am
Is this a paradigm shift? Thought I would throw in one more “boomerism” so that we have a more complete list.
Lisa L
November 12, 2010 at 12:46 pm
And let’s not forget the social media “sensibility” that real estate bloggers represent…to quote Bridget Jones, “Gaaaahhhh!”
Matthew Hardy
November 12, 2010 at 12:55 pm
People who sell use terms and phrases like: sell, sales, contact you and contract.
People who sell and want to pretend they’re *not* selling use terms and phrases like: engage, friend you, reach out and understanding.
I miss transparency.
Michael Sosnowski
November 13, 2010 at 8:09 am
How about this…..the expo floor is all about selling Realtors “stuff”. That’s what vendors do. At a NAR convention that are thousands of potential clients looking for the next easy solution to “fix” their business or accomplish goals without really working. Has this ever changed? If you are a Realtor you are constantly bombarded by crummy products that are dumbed down for the masses. SM is the current “in” thing because there are many opportunities to sell agents stuff.
If you are overlooking SM or the next “technology” you do so at your business peril, but like anything else it takes hard work and dedication and a good evaluation of where it fits in your overall business model.
MarikaRealtor
November 16, 2010 at 11:18 am
The letter and all of the remarks that follojust are amazing! Jjust for having literary skills exposed, appreciated and shared on such scale – social media will be ever fascinating.