I am a complete and total bigot...against androids
Viewed from a distance, the story below is pretty amazing, and I know there's a very fine line between a healthy skepticism of technology run amok, and a Hollywood-caliber paranoia over a perceived threat that isn't necessarily an eventuality. Moreover, forty years in this life has taught me that in the end, you can get used to just about anything.
But I'm sorry, I don't like the thought of androids in our midst; maybe it's close-minded of me, maybe in the end I'll be one of those who gets passed by, or shipped off to a 'reservation' to live with the new savages in an increasingly mechanized and computerized world. But 'C-3PO', and all that he implies, is entertaining only on the big screen. I don't want to spend any time with him, nor come to rely on him in any scenario that involves face time. And I think the message of another sci-fi movie, 2001's 'A.I', should never be dismissed as mere Hollywood fantasy, as it would seem sometimes we are being hurled toward that eventuality.
Right now, amazing as it may be, I just don't want to see this frigging thing standing at my hotel door, nor do I ever want to have to reach down and grab my toiletries out of its head, or, beholden to a host of human etiquette it could not possibly care about, feel the impulse to lean forward and shout 'Thank you!', like an ugly American abroad. In fact, I'd much prefer to walk down to the lobby and get the items myself, so this concept is perverse on a couple of levels: not only might it be the start of the mechanization/computerization of our species, but also, for able-bodied individuals at least, it's certainly the perpetuation of a trend that's been going for at least three or four decades and has really taken root in the service-based society of the last twenty years: the notion, and expectation, that everything must be done for us, even things that don't need to be, or shouldn't be.
CLICK: Robot butlers to staff hotels, other facilities...
