NEW YORK CITY BOTS

[defrog]

ITEM: Kacie Kinzer, a student at NYU's ITP has been conducting an interesting social experiment involving cute simple robots navigating their way through New York City.

Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

The object was to see how much help the bots received from passers-by. Kinzer intentionally made the robots lo-tech, fully expecting them to be run over in traffic, or kicked, or stolen, or whatever.

Result: every bot made it to their destination.

Which either means that humans are nicer than we sometimes give ourselves credit for ... or we’re nicer to cute li'l machines than we are to each other.

Either way, I like Schneier’s observation that it indicates a victory in favor of common sense over fear. If someone had tried this four years ago (or in Boston), the police would have declared it a possible IED, put the city on high alert and shipped Kinzer to Gitmo for further “questioning”.

Welcome to the jungle,

This is dF

Comments

OMFG.....MOVING ROBOT!!

[garbagecanmusic.livejournal.com]

*cut to scene in Boston circa 2004 where screams and people running everywhere*

*Brave Boston police man risks his own life and confronts the robot, first unloading every bullet in his pistol into the robot, then throwing himself on the robot*