Preview of Westworld Japan at Aichi Expo

[Kuang_Grade]

[Buraku]

that has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen
A sheepish Japan human actally doing a kowtow, witha big bow to a bit of plastic and wax works
she should stand up and dump a steaming turd on the table as a mark of protest
A big F-you to the Nippon androids, masamania style

The Japan economy is dying, falling down a downward spiral from its own banking corrupution and yakuza construction business and this is the best the sheepish Japan leaders came come up with, idiot look wax works
Nippon either needs immigrants to slove its birth-cirsis ( worse birth rates than communist China ) or its needs real reforms, changes to the pension system, busting those corrupt firms and sorting out those yakauza banks

Japan economists seem to have their heads in the sand, do they watch too much anime or something ?

[Red Floyd]

Well, while wide-spread corruption is certainly an issue, I think we need to look at the real problem. And that is if one of those robots become sentient. The seccond one of those things even look at me funny I'll blast a hole in it the size of a VW Bug.

[FG Lurker]

And that is if one of those robots become sentient. The seccond one of those things even look at me funny [...]

By that time it'd already be too late.

[Bedi]

In fact i liked it. Hope to see one of these in Aichi this year. Something new and interesting to me. However i'm not in the mood now to comment on japanese economics and other stuff right now. Just liking the robot idea for now

As to the bowing... you may recognize that she is posing for the pic.

[Taro Toporific]

... Somewhere around 30% of all US jobs could be replaced by robots. What happens in a society when 30% of the jobs vanish and there is really nothing else that those workers have skills to do?

[/quote]

Easy, those workers come to Japan.

[FG Lurker]

[Edit: Reposted from above cause something happened to the original!]

The Japan economy is dying, falling down a downward spiral from its own banking corrupution and yakuza construction business and this is the best the sheepish Japan leaders came come up with, idiot look wax works

Over the next 50 years we will see more and more robotic workers in unskilled and even semi-skilled industries. The difference in the common-place use of robotics between now and 50 years from now is going to be somewhat like the difference in common-place computer use between now and 50 years ago.

This is going to present some serious challenges to society as we know it.

How serious? Somewhere around 30% of all US jobs could be replaced by robots. What happens in a society when 30% of the jobs vanish and there is really nothing else that those workers have skills to do?

[Marvin Feltcher]

Sorry!

[Captain Japan]

What happens in a society when 30% of the jobs vanish and there is really nothing else that those workers have skills to do?

That's Japan. The jobs vanished but the people haven't. As for what they do, they walk the halls carrying single sheets of paper. Heck, we even hire additional people to do that.

[FG Lurker]

What happens in a society when 30% of the jobs vanish and there is really nothing else that those workers have skills to do?

That's Japan. The jobs vanished but the people haven't. As for what they do, they walk the halls carrying single sheets of paper. Heck, we even hire additional people to do that.

Seriously though... These are jobs like cleaning people, burger flippers, conbini clerks... Just about any and every job that pays less than $10/hour in today's money, and probably quite a few that pay more than that.

A lot of them are student jobs, but also many are low-income workers supporting themselves or families.

In theory the students can "get by" somehow, but what about the person without much education trying to support a family? Retrain them? To what? They already don't have much education, and most other manual jobs will be gone too... And who will pay for the retraining? Who will support their families while they retrain?

Assuming we don't all croak from bird flu or kill ourselves with nukes, this is one of the biggest problems facing the developed world over the next decades. And not many people are considering how to deal with it...

[cstaylor]

Seriously though... These are jobs like cleaning people, burger flippers, conbini clerks... Just about any and every job that pays less than $10/hour in today's money, and probably quite a few that pay more than that.

My money is on another world war. Remember, China's going to have ~20% more men than women soon, so unless there's some way to meet that need you can expect some serious combat in the near future.

[mas]

For those interested in Miss CreepyRobot, here's some creepy links:

http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/realmovie/actroid/actroid_low.rm
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/realmovie/actroid/actroid_hi.rm

[Taro Toporific]

For those interested in Miss CreepyRobot, here's some creepy links:
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/realmovie/actroid/actroid_low.rm
http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/realmovie/actroid/actroid_hi.rm

Stolen from that other forum...

[Kuang_Grade]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25394-2005Mar10?language=printer

Humanoids With Attitude
Japan Embraces New Generation of Robots

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A01

TOKYO -- Ms. Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university. But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up to Saya and dished out a harsh reprimand.

"You're so stupid!" said the professor, Hiroshi Kobayashi, towering over her desk.

"Eh?" she responded, her face wrinkling into a scowl. "I tell you, I am not stupid!"

Truth is, Saya isn't even human. But in a country where robots are changing the way people live, work, play and even love, that doesn't stop Saya the cyber-receptionist from defending herself from men who are out of line. With voice recognition technology allowing 700 verbal responses and an almost infinite number of facial expressions from joy to despair, surprise to rage, Saya may not be biological -- but she is nobody's fool.

"I almost feel like she's a real person," said Kobayashi, an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science and Saya's inventor. Having worked at the university for almost two years now, she's an old hand at her job. "She has a temper . . . and she sometimes makes mistakes, especially when she has low energy," the professor said.
[...]
"In Western countries, humanoid robots are still not very accepted, but they are in Japan," said Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Keihanna Science City near Kyoto. "One reason is religion. In Japanese [Shinto] religion, we believe that all things have gods within them. But in Western countries, most people believe in only one God. For us, however, a robot can have an energy all its own."

Of course, it helps if you influence the big guy first..."What's that Tama-Chan? I should build you a giant concrete island so you can lay in the sun? Ok, let me just finish sinking the dollar and I'll get on that right away. I love you Tama-chan!" Actually, this photo is so good we should have a caption contest for this one.

[Kuang_Grade]

Haven't found the source material, but this was posted on Akihabara News

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_9302.html

Virtual Bus Tour Guides for an unspecified Hiroshima bus company. The tour talk would synced with GPS so it would stay relevent even if the tour ran slow.

[GuyJean]

Honoring Japan's respect for nature by promoting robots, we find..
Japan's Expo of Contradictions

http://atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GD02Dh01.html

"The bureaucracy of the Japanese government has done everything it could practically to wipe clean, flatten and do away with 'Nature's Wisdom'," author Alex Kerr told Asia Times Online. Kerr is the first foreigner in Japan's history to win the prestigious Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, which he received in 1994 for his non-fiction book about cultural and environmental changes in contemporary Japan, titled Lost Japan.

"As hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent continually on this [environmental degradation], for Japan to be hosting something called 'Nature's Wisdom' is somewhat ironic," Kerr said.

Concrete thinking
Of great concern to many Japanese is the destruction of Japan's once legendary natural beauty by massive and often unnecessary public works undertaken by the Construction Ministry and its subcontractors. The construction industry is so large in Japan that the name dokken kokka ("construction state") is commonly used by Japanese pundits when describing their country. Public works are huge business in Japan for contractors and government bureaucrats alike, and spending in this area has grown to two or three times that of other industrialized countries. The result of these environmentally disruptive works, according to Kerr, is that Japan has become arguably the world's ugliest country...

Interesting read..

GJ

[dimwit]

I have seen pictures of the site and it seems as environmently friendly as my neighborhood park, which is order to build they clear-cut of the existing trees, layed over with flag stone pathways, half left barren for gateball, and planted with three or four cherry trees so that the neighborhood fossils would have somewhere to amble for a Hamami Party.

Let's Happy Green

[Kuang_Grade]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18936-2005Apr1?language=printer

TWP writer retreads previous news research into travel piece.

Japan's World Expo: The Future Is Here

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page P01

There I was, soaring in the clouds to an accompaniment of classical music drifting down from the heavens. A flock of geese glided by, complaining loudly at the aerial intrusion by a group of pesky humans. And then, as fast as a raindrop, I was falling, falling, falling down to Earth, plunging into the inky ocean depths and wading with an array of those bizarre transparent fish with spiny teeth you normally only see on the Discovery Channel.

Yet truth be told, that classical riff wasn't exactly coming out of thin air. And after emerging from the deep sea dive, there was nary a wet spot on my brown twill pants. But the experience inside the Japan Pavilion at the huge 2005 World Expo, mounted in central Japan's teeming Aichi Prefecture, was enough to give me genuine vertigo as I stood inside a spherical theater suspended on a narrow glass bridge, completely surrounded by seamless 3-D images and an ingeniously hidden high-tech sound system.

The virtual voyage at the expo, which opened near Japan's third-largest metropolis of Nagoya on March 25, goes a long way toward answering a vital question about the modern relevance of these global fairs. First launched in London in 1851 -- an era when "going abroad" demanded tiring days of travel with big trunks and even bigger wallets -- the expos once provided the common man with a rare glimpse into exotic lands. But in the age of the Internet and modern travel, when foreign cultures are no more than a mouse click away and New York to Hong Kong a 15-hour nonstop flight, has the concept of a world fair become obsolete?

To be sure, with the outbreak of globalization, much of the expo's promise of foreign wonder has, for better or worse, diminished. Never again are we likely to see the sweeping impact of, say, the 1867 Paris Exposition when the French, overwhelmed by their first full exposure to the natural beauty embodied by Japanese aesthetics, gave birth to the art nouveau movement that would revolutionize Western design. The loss of that exotic mystique is reflected in the visitor numbers: More than 64 million people turned out for the Osaka World Expo in 1970, its first time in Japan. This year, the Aichi expo is projected to draw a far more modest 15 million.

But the Japanese have managed to regain a measure of relevance to this year's expo by focusing on that other aspect of the event's spirit -- a look into the future of humanity. While some of the 71 country pavilions do hit occasional high notes, the real fun is inside the multimillion-dollar theaters and pavilions staged by the Japanese government and such domestic mega-companies as Toyota, Mitsubishi and Hitachi. They have transformed the 427-acre site into Japan World, a futuristic village of local gadgetry, robots and high-tech entertainment with colorful splashes of Japanese pop culture. That, perhaps, is what World Expos are now all about Host countries strutting their stuff on the world stage.

And make no mistake, Japan -- where humanoid robots have already begun working as receptionists, night watchmen and tour guides -- does the future-world thing like nobody's business.

...

[Taro Toporific]

news.yahoo.com...Aichi's information booth worker Actroid, developed by Japanese firms Kokoro and Advanced Media....
...Kokoro marketing chief Tatsuo Matsuzaki said it would be only "an honest reaction" if people felt a bit creepy around copies of human beings.

"My Girl" in Tokyo (26 sec - google video)