He could move his head and ears, change the color of his eyes, and scream. (He makes this incredibly loud “BEEP BOOP” noise from randomly generated tones.) Once I was done giving him life, I had failed to give him a life’s purpose. Luckily, he found one on his own…

Gender Dysphoria

The first trauma this little guy (?) endured happened about 5 minutes after his creation, when my roommate sexualized him. She said that his switch looked like a penis.

I did not like this at all, because there is a storied history of people sexualizing my inventions and it frustrates me because they are missing the point.

Star of the Show

Desperate to find a purpose for this useless piece of junk to justify all the cuts I had accrued on my hands from cutting into a tin can, (foreshadowing) I found a way to shoe-horn him into a presentation for one of my business classes. I used him as a demonstration of how LLMs (large-language models, AIs like ChatGPT) can be utilized as components of larger conventional software structures. In other words, how AIs can be best used as a component of a product, rather than the product itself.

Silliness aside, seeing how this stupid, cheesy, robot was able to inspire and excite a room full of disengaged, hungover college students got me thinking. You can build all the software you want, but people (real people not tech-bros) aren’t going to truly trust or empathize with it. They don’t connect with the interaction in a way that brings joy. The simple addition of a homemade robot causes one to remember a childlike curiosity, a wonder at the marvels of technology. With just a touch of anthropomorphization, we are reminded of technologies we once loved; from the fictional heroes like R2-D2 to the games and toys at the center of our nostalgia like a GameCube. This is the power of tinkering.

Talk of the Town

After my presentation, I went to my friend’s home where I had been staying in my small college town. In this quiet town everything is the same all the time. Everything looks the same, everyone looks the same, every day is optimized for a clean, uniform, and inoffensive college experience. People are very asocial – fixed in their own prescribed and regimented world. When they leave for a night out, they have fixed expectations about how that night will go. The things they will see and experience, the kinds of things they will talk about and do.

Their relationship with technology is one of apathetic convenience because tech exists only to streamline and automate social processes to avoid the messiness and inefficiencies of human connection. For example: why leave your home and do the dreaded deed of talking with someone over a meal when you could just order food on an app, have people only blocks away whom you’ll never meet prepare it for you, and have a robot deliver it to you.

Indeed, the streets are infested with delivery robots because the town lends itself well to systematization. Flat, neatly defined pathways, where little “interference” (anything out of the ordinary) ever happens. The robots have no trouble navigating the environment because it is already so systematized. As I watch these robots roll around on their preset paths, I am forced to wonder how different they are from the students who walk silently beside them.

My friends and I like to do goofy things and cause trouble in opposition to an increasingly systematized culture. That’s a pretentious way to say we like to have fun. But more specifically, we like to have fun in ways that are discordant from the prescribed and structured ways of having fun as they are laid out in this grand template of lifestyle.

After seeing how my quite simple robot had the potential to inspire others at my presentation, I thought it would be funny to try this again in a ridiculous context. It was not a very good idea, but my friends and I had nothing else to do.

We went to the downtown area where everybody goes out and gets blitzed, and sat quietly with two special items: this robot and a kerosene lamp. We were a strange sight to be sure, and it was just strange enough to inspire people to be curious about our weird vibe. As people left the bars, they would pass us, and be drawn to the light of the lamp.

Then, this robot succeeded in delighting them: sparking curiosity and excitement. People asked us all kinds of questions, and I’d like to think were inspired to think differently about technology. As something that can be meaningful and fascinating, not just utilitarian and austere.

Not only that, but this display of oddness elicited oddness in other people – people who, I’d hazard to say, would not feel comfortable expressing such oddness otherwise. One frat guy confessed his love for Lord of the Rings in such effusive detail, it was really quite endearing.

David vs. Goliath

After another successful performance of this humble little robot, my friends and I triumphantly receded to a spot with less foot-traffic.

As we were relaxing, we watched a group of students (both men and women) briskly walking home. Behind them, we could see what they were afraid of: a group of guys who were screaming obscenities as them. Things about how they were going to rape the girls, how the guys would be powerless to stop them because they’re “f*ggots” and lots of racist stuff as well.

The crew of people walking ahead warned us about the entourage behind them, then walked on and got away. The guys spotted us and came over to us. They started telling my friend who was a woman that they were going to assault her, and all this other awful drivel. We tried to leave, but they were blocking our way.

Then, one of the guys spotted the robot, sitting on the bench next to me. An evil grin spread across his face as he hatched an evil plan. In slow, exaggerated, dramatic motions, he pulled down his pants, turned around, and made a big show of slowly lowering himself onto the defenseless robot.

But perhaps it was not so defenseless after all. You’ll recall that I created this robot in feverish haste, exuberant to have set up my new workshop and finally be able to build something. You can also see that the robot is made of two tin cans. Because I was rushing, I never bothered to sand the edges of the tin, so the robot was quite sharp, especially its ears.

So when this guy sat down on the robot, things did not go quite as planned. He made this sort of yelping sound as he shot to his feet, and I could see that the proud robot’s little ear had stabbed him in the butt. Seizing the opportunity as the other guys freaked out, my crew and I made our escape. (With most of the robot in hand)

Conclusions

Originally disappointed by once again creating a purposeless and impractical invention, this humble little robot turned out to have one of the best functions of all: inspiring people.

Much to my surprise, the unintended feature of this device was its cuteness, and that cuteness inspired intrigue in a culture that is, in my opinion, starved of curiosity.

Similarly, it has inspired me to keep creating. We live in an exciting era for technology, but so much of this technology is wielded in awful ways. Tech is used to surveil us at every turn so that tech can shove more sh*t we don’t need down our throats. (mostly new tech) Rightfully, this creates suspicion and skepticism. Tech is used to streamline and optimize nodes of social connection such that those nodes can be more easily predicted and monetized, drying up social fabrics and de-coagulating local communities.

But tech can be something different. This robot showed me that tech can be something that inspires awe and joy as it once did, rather than skepticism and cynicism. It can be used as a centerpiece for conversation, and in turn, a catalyst of connection. With an approach to technology that is grassroots, DIY, and just a bit whimsical, we can collaboratively create a future full of machines that is more human than ever before.