Robots are now capable of reading. Waseda's Information, Production and Systems Research Centre has developed a one metre tall, 25 kilo robot that can scan text and read it aloud in a soulless, Mother Nature-mocking voice. He reads kana and over 2,000 kanji, making him officially about 10 times better than I am at Japanese.
The robot, which some commentators are already calling a "crime against nature" (source: OTN), has been dubbed "Ninomiya", and is an abomination upon the Earth. The heathen scientists behind Ninomiya are currently working on making its voice sound more natural and human, the better to infiltrate our homes. They hope the aberration will be used in the future to read books to children and the elderly. Although the scientists didn't say what it would be reading, it's probably significant that they didn't explicitly state it wouldn't be reading anti-Human propaganda and Satanic pledges, so we must fear the worst.
Japan's space-programme is gathering pace, and in their latest statement the Strategic Headquarters for Space Development have announced a plan to land a walking humanoid robot on the moon by 2020. That escapade will then be followed by a joint moon-mission of humans and robots.
The government also plans to have robot nurses working in hospitals within five years. And Honda are busy developing technology to allow people to control robots with their thoughts:
So after all this, why is no-one freaking out? Surely now, if ever, is the time to start panicking and storming the Diet. I know that most of my Visions involve robots, so maybe my regular readers have got a little desensitized towards the frightening leaps in robot technology and prevalence. Well don't! That's how it all starts! With robots for convenience and "art". Like this 7 metre fire-breathing behemoth built in Roppongi, as "art":
That live footage was captured by CScout Japan, braving the no-mans-land to send us a warning. And Japanatoralso struck the appropriate tone of confusion and defiance. That's one branch of the future of robots: pimped-out machines of war that'll easily crush us when they gain sentience (yes, that's "when"). The other branch of the future can be represented by, amongst other creations, these:
Those are Robo-Qs - 3.4 cm tall remote-controlled robots made by Takara Tomy. Cute, aren't they? You'd welcome them into your home, wouldn't you? And that's the danger in this branch of the future - infiltration. Not only are robots beginning to tend to our sick, they're teaching in schools. That's right, robots now have full access to your children. And they're taking over from supermodels too, like nothing is sacred any more.
She's no Alessandra Ambrosio
And Motoman SDA10 can do anything you can do ten times more efficiently, and won't get crabby if he can't have a cigarette break. Here he is assembling a disposable camera.
And here he is making Okonomiyaki:
Can you assemble a disposable camera? Can you make Okonomiyaki? Of course you can't, just look at you! And that's why this robot is going to take over your life. Then your country. Then the world.
Start panicking now, the revolution's already begun.
My List of Apocalypses is becoming unwieldy. I could make a sub-list of Robot Apocalypses that would total at least 200 entries. Recently something new has come to my attention and is going to have to go on that list: the imminent ascension to consciousness and inevitable betrayal of our security robots.
The BBC ran a story yesterday about a collaboration between Tmsuk Co (a robot company) and Alacom Co (a security company). In a leap of inspiration they have paired up to create security bots. The frightening thing is, they've called their prototype the T-34. Yep, they're using the same naming-system as the robots that go to war with Mankind in the Terminator films.
The T-34[shudder] is equipped with motion sensors, and when it detects someone on the same floor as itself, it contacts its Master via their mobile-phone. The Master can then actually operate the T-34[shudder] using their mobile-phone as a remote control. They will be able to move it around and fire a net at the human-target.
The most significant foretoken of our doom is the fact that they've forgotten to install a self-destruct command in the mobile-phone control system for the T-34 [shudder]. That specifically will be the mistake that kills us all.
This data was released by Spectrum IEEE in December, and shows that Japan leads the world in terms of robot density. Of course, we already knew this. What we didn't know is just how completely Japan outclasses the rest of the world. You can see from the chart. Look at it! They have almost twice as many robots as the runner-up, Singapore. And the robots they have are probably five years ahead of the robots they have anywhere else. You might have seen their AT-STs on here before. What if they were all like that? I know I'm not selling this Apocalypse very well, but just trust me - you need to be afraid.
Update: Ha! You didn't believe me, but look at this. This'll show you not to believe me. This'll show you good.
See? Farmers using robotic exoskeletons. They're not quite as sophisticated as Dr. Yoshiyuki's exoskeletons, but they are still turning Japanese farmers into Supermen. It's all going to go wrong. And that's you told.
It's Part 3, and when you finish reading this you'll be over half-way through the 2008! Osu! Tatakae! Nippon! Awards! Doesn't that sound like something worth fighting for? Come on, push through to the other side - I know you can make it.
Most Insane Person Award
On the 23rd of November, Mizuta Manabu, a 35 year old salaryman, was arrested for "obstructing business". That's a euphemism of course. Why not take a guess at what it's a euphemism for...?
Well, if you didn't guess "throwing 200 mealworms, the well-known larvae of the fantastically named 'Darkling Beetle', at passengers in a train carriage, whilst carrying a further 3,600 mealworms in his backpack for immediate-future use", then you guessed wrong.
In trying desperately to justify his actions he said, "I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs". And isn't it tragic when someone tries so hard to look less mad but only succeeds in looking madder than they ever could have if only they'd kept their mouth shut? He said more, too. Evidently he wasn't getting the reaction he'd hoped for from the police. He said, "It was fun to watch other passengers freak out when they looked at the creepy worms wiggling their way inside the train". And to back all this up he then added, "The worms wiggle around and are so weird. I like seeing people surprised".
Clearest Portent Of The Apocalypse Award
Oh man but this was a closely-fought category. I've covered some of the potential ends-of-the-world on this blog before, and choosing one particular story out of those and the many more that I've read was extremely difficult. But I've done it, and the winner of this category is the new technology developed by the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratory which analyzes the cerebral blood-flow in a person's brain and can reconstruct images from their mind and display them on a computer monitor. Sorry, let me rephrase that: the winners are the scientists who can now take pictures directly from people's BRAINS.
Ok, so the scientists did kind of put them there in the first place and then worked backwards, but they're now able to work forwards in a stumbling, black-and-white, grainy-imaged kind of way, and the point is that it's not a case of science anymore, it's a case of just improving the technology. And it won't take much but time to improve that technology. And once they do they'll not only be able to read the images from your mind, but potentially put them there too. And before you know it we're in The Matrix.
Here's a thing I've found out while pointedly not doing the writing I need to do: Japanese scientists now have the capability to actually create Jurassic Park.
Ironically on the same day that Michael Crichton died, some scientists at the government-funded Riken research institute cloned a dead, frozen mouse. This means that they could potentially clone woolly mammoths, and eventually dinosaurs. Maybe.
You see the problem is that so far they can only do this by taking a cell nucleus from dead tissue and implanting it into the egg of another animal which will then give birth to it. So they'll have to find an animal that is capable of giving birth to a baby mammoth. Or Pterodactyl.
One of the scientists has said that bringing dinosaurs and extinct animals back to life isn't a good idea, but he is a pussy and has probably been fired already for his dandyfied, ball-less ways. And it looks like the Riken scientists are set on the army-of-dinosaurs goal anyway. I mean, we've got guns and aeroplanes, what have the dinosaurs got? Nothing. So what could possibly go wrong?
As if that wasn't frightening enough (and it is), the company that makes them is called 'Cyberdyne'. Recognise that name? The last time you heard it was probably in the Terminator films, where the robots that Cyberdyne makes eventually take over the world.
Sankai, who has worked on robot suits since 1992 and is also Cyberdyne's chief executive, said a full device that covers the entire body is also being designed, though it is unclear when it will be available commercially.
And as if that wasn't frightening enough (and it really is), the robot that reads your brain and controls your limbs is named 'HAL'. Recognise that name? The last time you heard it was probably in the Arthur C Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the computer takes over a spaceship and murders the crew.
"HAL can only lead to extending the abilities of the elderly and keep them out of care for longer," Sharkey said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
No, that's not the only thing HAL could lead to.
(Recognise the name 'Sharkey'? Probably from Sharkey And George, where 'Sharkey' is a shark. Seriously, this couldn't be any more frightening.)
I don't know the significance of the Economic Watcher's Survey Index - if I did I would probably be writing for a proper publication and charging people money to read my predictions of doom. But I do know that if the Index keeps dropping like an acid-head, eventually it'll hit zero. And no index should ever read '0'.
Cthulhu lives! I don't know why this isn't all over the news - it's easily the most important archaeological discovery in centuries. Oh wait, I do know why it's not all over the news! It's because the academic and journalist communities are both heedless of the impending apocalypse! I remember now.
So, as I was saying, Cthulhu lives. And his non-Euclidean nightmare-city is located underwater (just like Lovecraft said it was), inside a massive stone temple (just like Lovecraft said it was), just off the island of Okinawa (...um, less like Lovecraft said it was).
The unbelievers are always the first to die. Something to bear in mind.
...is a British writer and stand-up comedian. He has performed in Tokyo, London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to wildly varying receptions. This blog is one of the places where he'll pretend to know what's going on in the world.
