I went and saw a very odd, whimsical little puppet show tonight. If rubber gloves full of water with tin-can heads having sex and/or eating each other can be called whimsical…
It reminded me a lot of how I felt seeing Asimo interact with his human. It made me realise how impossible it would be, in a world with robotics, to emotionally distance myself from the robotic beings.
It made me think that maybe the ancient art of puppetry – of bringing inanimate objects to life, and through them expressing some of the deepest base human emotions – has a lot more to do with robotics than you would at first think.
I’m going to look into it and get back to you!