A post in the NYT photo blog asks if Japanese acceptance of robotics has origins in Shinto belief. (via Elizabeth Housley)  Surprisingly they don’t mention Masahiro Mori.

Will we see humanoid robots taking more active roles in hospitals, constructions sites and other work places outside Japan?  And will robots like the Paro therapy seal showing up more often in homes?  How far away is a robotic pet trade? The Pleo is a pretty astonishing toy and an example of what the future may hold in this regard:

This video does suggest an eagerness by these elderly Japanese Paro owners to accept their robotic companion, and even see it as superior to human and non-human animal companions.

This feels at first, in a speculative fiction sort-of-way, like one more step toward turning the planet into a large neural network… Building floating synapses for the network mind, out in the sea.

“In general, computing centers are located on a ship or ships, which are then anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away from computers in the data center,” Google writes in the patent application.

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I want to watch A&E’s remake of Andromeda Strain… However, the digital cable god won’t give it to me. Why is this? I keep thinking it’s somehow related to the rain.

Is this the moment when technology becomes a part of our religious environment? When we suspect it is affected by numinous forces like weather and the hand of nature or gods or weather systems? Why would my digital cable be at all affected by the weather? Why not? I’m affected by the weather.

The little arrows on the screen chase one another round and round never ending or beginning…the screen says “Your program is now being accessed and will begin shortly.” But nothing happens. There is a large eye in the graphic behind the spinning arrows, an eye with a spiral in it. The whole thing concludes with the phrase:

“One moment please…”

Reading Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence by Robert M. Geraci