Japanfs low-tech life (BBC quotes Taro!)

[Taro Toporific]

[gomichild]

They are getting desperate for news sources nowadays....

[Taro Toporific]

They are getting desperate for news sources nowadays....

Yep. This weekend The Independent will be interviewing me on robotics, and how vague-crappy Japanese language instructions for a surgical robot killed two people in a 3-month period.

[Christoff]

Yep. This weekend The Independent will be interviewing me on robotics, and how vague-crappy Japanese language instructions for a surgical robot killed two people in a 3-month period.

If im not mistaken those were tenga flip hole malfunction related deaths, all of which took place in your office...

[Taro Toporific]

If im not mistaken those were tenga flip hole malfunction related deaths, all of which took place in your office...

From the Land of Zen cums the sound of one hand clapping...

[YT]DzKgE8pcEcE[/YT]
More...

[Typhoon]

I don't recall ever reading a positive article in the British press about Japan or at least one that does not end on a negative note.

This goes back to the time of the Osaka Expo '70.

[Taro Toporific]

I don't recall ever reading a positive article in the British press about Japan...

Electric dreams: Is it the end for robot development?
---We were promised a life of leisure thanks to hard-working robots and fiendishly clever cyborgs. But the android fantasy has largely been terminated, argues Michael Fitzpatrick---
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 | The Independent
For years technocrats have been touting robots as the next big revolution, so big that their importance will rival that of car production and that they will create a utopia, "an Athens without the slaves", as British agriculture minister Peter Walker put it in 1983. But despite such claims, the development of mass-produced useful, commercial robots hasn't much moved beyond the glorified nut tighteners that work at car plant....
...<big snip>...
..."Without 'consciousness', robots are just spot welders, bolt-tightening arms, burger flippers, spray painters, and factory drones that can swivel dexterously back and forth in pre-programmed for assembly line work. They're expensive toasters –]says Taro[/B] Hitachi, a Tokyo-based Japan blogger and an expert in patents. "Decades of creating fantasy robots, like Asimo, Aibo, Roborior et al, has bankrupted the research and development departments of Japan while not resulting in any viable products."
Nor does he accept that Japan's high robot count is a true reflection of the reality: "Japan counts almost any kind of semi-autonomous factory machinery as a 'robot', whereas in the rest of the world, milling machines and potato pealing machines are just factory automation."
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