Machines as Best Friends - 2

Fisher Price Rockin' Tunes Giraffe

In my previous post, Machines as Best Friends, I mentioned seeing advertisements for two toys that made me think about whether we are setting ourselves up to prefer machines as friends over real human friends. Of course, I'm not really worried about it but it is something to think about. Well, today, I saw the commercials again and realized I had many of my fact wrong. It wasn't a horse the the child was riding in one ad. It was a giraffe! How could I get that wrong? The picture of the Rockin' Tunes Giraffe is the first image in the upper right. I did get some things right. It makes pleasing sounds when the child does certain things. And when it rocks fast enough, the clopping sounds start. So, we can begin to train our future equestrians (or giraffe riders) to prefer the higher speed gaits of those animals.

Fisher Price Crawl Around Car

The other toy I was thinking about was a small car that the child can crawl around in . As you can see from the second picture, on the lower left, the part that tells the child they have selected the sunny day is showing.So, I was wrong about this one, too. I didn't remember it being a car. That is all after seeing both commercials that day. How many other things do I get wrong? Did the Red Sox really get into the play-offs this year?

As usual, I'm late to the party on this. There was a Twilight Zone episode ("I Sing the Body Electric") back in the 60's about a father who, upon his wife's death, goes out and purchases a robotic grandmother to take care of his three children. She never gets tired. She always encourages. She never dies and is always friendly. The episode didn't show them preferring the robot to other people but it is the robotic grandmother that the children spend most of their time with. And there is a sub-plot in the story about the oldest child being upset with her mother for dying. She's just a child and can't help being selfish. But when she finds that the robotic grandmother won't leave her like her mother did, you can see how happy she is. It's almost as if they are saying the robotic grandmother is better than the child's mother.

We need to concentrate on getting along with our fellow humans, first:

Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Romans 12:17-18 NLT