Thursday, June 7, 2007
Robo-Bear!
Now, personally, I think that perhaps the sight of a giant robot bear coming across the battlefield to rescue me would be a less than reassuring sight, but perhaps I guess you don' t really know for sure until you've been there. There are no atheists in fox-holes; also everyone in foxholes loves giant robo-bears.
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6 comments:
"A really important thing when you're dealing with casualties is trying to maintain that human touch."
Um, yeah, that's why we designed it to look like a BEAR!
And a METAL Bear at that. Remember those Wire Monkey Mammas--that didn't work out so well, did it? A little plush would probably go a long way, tho' maybe not be so very easy to clean...
What I really want to know is when they'll have giant robot bears designed to haul authoress-laden palanquins around Wiscon.
On a serious note, the press seems to play up the teddy bear resemblance -- I suspect what happened was they looked at their options:
A) Design it totally functionally (in which case it would probably have no head or reconizable face)
B) Make it look like a person: there's a huge literature documenting how creeped out people get by stuff that looks kind of human but isn't quite accurate (the "Uncanny Valley" phenomoenon)
C) Make it look like something friendly but cartoonishly non-human
(C) seems like the sensible choice to me.
Yeah--where's my palanquin? And why stop at Wiscon...
Yeah, I can see the point of using a bear--but it's a rather scary bear, viz. the Wire Mother effect. Surely they could come up with some plushy material that can be cleaned...
That's supposed to look like a bear? More upright praying mantis or tall pale ant, if you ask me. I'd rather have a Huitzil come to my rescue, sanctuary-much.
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