The roomba. Dear lord the freaking roomba. This is a ridiculous machine that spans from $250 to an amazingly absurd $899.99! What does it do? Does it do your taxes? Can it teleport you to some other location? Is it capable of creating a meal by simply putting in the necessary ingredients!? No...it cleans your floor...Thats it. I still struggle to grasp the fact that people are willing to pay upwards of a months rent, for something that claims to clean your floor. Of all the people I have met who have had owned one of these ridiculous machines, they all say that it's pretty disappointing. It gets stuck against a wall, doesn't clean the whole floor, or just plain doesn't work.
I feel this robotic vacuum speaks volumes of our time and what our society is willing to spend its money on. Money, something that is so precious to us, people are willing to drop some serious cash just so they don't have to vacuum their floor. Now vacuuming really isn't my favorite activity either, but it takes up to an hour at the most to vacuum your house. This just goes to show how lazy our society truly is. How badly we just want all of our problems to go away with the least amount of effort possible. Now this machine doesn't make us question what a human is by making us consider the machine a human, but rather it makes us question what a human is, by making us consider what characteristics we possess. And laziness, regardless of the human, is present in us all. Now to varying degrees of course, but one thing that humans possess that a robot or automaton does not, is laziness, sloth, lethargic. Robots are efficient beings that see a task and finish a task, humans are capable of doing this at times, but no one is always motivated, always being active. And there is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes is results in spending absurd amounts of money on a vacuum...
I feel this robotic vacuum speaks volumes of our time and what our society is willing to spend its money on. Money, something that is so precious to us, people are willing to drop some serious cash just so they don't have to vacuum their floor. Now vacuuming really isn't my favorite activity either, but it takes up to an hour at the most to vacuum your house. This just goes to show how lazy our society truly is. How badly we just want all of our problems to go away with the least amount of effort possible. Now this machine doesn't make us question what a human is by making us consider the machine a human, but rather it makes us question what a human is, by making us consider what characteristics we possess. And laziness, regardless of the human, is present in us all. Now to varying degrees of course, but one thing that humans possess that a robot or automaton does not, is laziness, sloth, lethargic. Robots are efficient beings that see a task and finish a task, humans are capable of doing this at times, but no one is always motivated, always being active. And there is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes is results in spending absurd amounts of money on a vacuum...
I like this post because I think Roombas are a hilarious attempt at freeing up space in a person's everyday life. There has also been several attempts to have a Roomba - like lawnmower, where the edges of a yard are lined with an invisible fence so that the robot doesn't leave the yard.
ReplyDeleteThis attempt at people freeing up their lives from mundane chores reminds me of R.U.R. In the play, the whole purpose of Domin and the company is to have so many robots across the world that people no longer have to work, and are free to pursue whatever interests them. In the Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway talks about how the lines between work and home will become blurred with "homework", where people are never truly away from their jobs. I see humanity's attempt at automating mundane chores such as yard work, washing dishes, vacuuming, etc., as a movement forward in the spirit of these works. Even though people may come home from their jobs, more and more often the work is continued in some way at home. This leaves less time for family, hobbies, and chores. So in trying to mitigate that, technology is driven in ways to make chores more automated. By paying a large upfront cost for a vacuuming or lawn-mowing robot, people are essentially buying themselves more time to do other things.
In the class reading, Aristotle talked about how great it would be to have automated tools so that the craftsman can have more time to pursue other projects. Although the normal citizen may not be a master craftsman, they still desire the automation of everyday tasks to pursue other things.