HUAR

Who needs robots?

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Here in the futuristic world known as the present, robots can be used to manufacture goods. But sometimes you long for simpler times. Here’s an invention that combines the simple, old-time pleasures of a rocking chair and a knitted hat. The rocking chair harnesses the power of your rocking and puts it to good use, answering the age old question: how can we use old people for fuel?

The chair looks so simple, that I’m completely flabbergasted that it can do something as complicated (to me at least) as knitting a hat. No robots or computer chips or even electricity required.

You know, now I feel kind of silly for all the time I’ve spent knitting…

Link via Sara.

Robot Orchestra

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I have seen one robot playing music, but I have not seen *many* robots playing music. And something so cool might as well be set to the James Bond theme, right?

 

Sure, you could have made a robotic synthesizer with speakers, or even one robot to play the music, but there is definitely something cooler about the fact that it is many robots coordinating together to make the music.

It is also frightening to see them working together like this. Definitely reminds me of the swarminoid. Sure, for now the robots just play music and get books off of shelves, but is it that hard to imagine them coordinating an attack on the human overlords, or the manufacture of additional robots of their own design? We’re swimming in dangerous waters my friends.

Link via Sylvain.

The Beginning of the End

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I try and I try to warn about the robot menace, but nobody listens to me. Every day some new story about robots getting smarter, scientists teaching them to stab people, etc. Quite frankly, I don’t know why the scientists even make them.

First off, the most dire news I have probably ever heard…a computer gave birth to a new life form. A computer actually created a DNA sequence, inserted it into an existing organism, and then got that organism to reproduce. This is the first time that someone (or something) was able to create a DNA sequence that was actually able to perpetuate itself.

Read that paragraph about 3 times and if you’re not too frightened to go on, let me tell you about this one. A robot actually performed a science experiment. That doesn’t sound scary until you consider what that means: a robot was able to perform a task, learn from its failure, modify the task and keep going until it got it right.

Did you buy some of that robot insurance I mentioned? Humans united against robots.