From: Alienthe@hotmail.com   
      
   First off, as a reply to the header itself: why wait for the   
   future when domestic robots already have appeared? Several   
   companies manufacture several types of robots for the home   
   such as lawn movers, vacuum cleaners and just toys.   
      
   Neowulf (Aaron VonDerheide) wrote:   
      
   > I was wondering if we could conjecture about robots in use in a cyberpunk   
   > story--say, the typical number of robots (and their form & function) in a   
   > house (or apartment) in, say, the year 2025. Or maybe 2015.   
   >   
   > Feel free to wander a bit off this topic--I just need some inspiration.   
      
      
   Would that be for a cyberpunk story? Then again Asimov wrote   
   a number of non-cyberpunk stories exploring the roles of robots   
   in an imagined future. Some were clearly space opera.   
      
   > I've been toying with the following notions:   
   >  - A four-feet-tall humanoid robot (like that one on the old Buck Rodgers   
   > TV show) takes care of each story of a house; it would be sort-of a   
   > robo-butler.   
      
      
   I believe it as Asimov that pointed out that billions of years   
   of development has brought forward the human body as perhaps   
   the most versatile shape and functionality. Single purpose can   
   look like anything. Of course if you have robots in VR they   
   can look like anything or anyone, like the Music Master.   
      
   >  - Then, upper middle-class would probably have one or two robots designed   
   > to be, well, I guess one could call them dynamic works of art (you know, a   
   > robot dragon the size of a dog, a holographic fish tank, dancing modern   
   > art, coffee tables spouting 3D holographic light shows that look like MSWin   
   > MediaPlayer visualizations--that sort of thing, mostly just for decorative   
   > purposes).   
      
      
   While not pretending to know all about upper middle class the   
   stereotype of it suggest more a taste for the discrete rather   
   than the garish.   
      
   >  - I also considered a robot pet that would be kind-of...unique-looking,   
   > kind-of like one of those furry animal sidekicks in anime TV shows.   
   > (Anybody ever seen Ryo-oki in "Tench Muyo"?)   
      
      
   Or how about Aibo? Or dozens of other Japanese robots unlikely   
   ever to be exported?   
      
   > Aaron   
   > E-mail: neowulf (NOSPAM!) @earthlink.net   
   > Web: http://www.neowulf.net   
      
   If you want to explore the issue it is hard to avoid the interest   
   of the sex industry, a frequent technology driver. Will for instance   
   a robotic free for all end prostitution? Or will they just got into   
   VR and set up a Paypal account?   
      
   An article in Wired showed that poeple already bond emotionally   
   even with the simple robots we have today, insisting on repair   
   rather than replacements. Naming robots is not new, even the   
   early indictrial robots on Japanese assembly lines were given   
   pet names by their human colleagues.   
      
   It is a big issues and a lot is there to be explored.   
      
   ==<)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)