The Future Is Now

I saw this Korea-relevant article from the BBC today and thought I'd share it here. As one can see, Korea is beginning to seriously consider what the world will look like once "social" machines are fully integrated into the daily routines of the everyman and woman. I am surprised by the government's prediction that every Korean household will have a robot in it by 2020 at the latest, but I'm not an expert, so what do I really know? Being aware of the current state of capitalist production and contemporary legal concerns, I imagine that the Robot Ethics Charter will have a lot more to do with intellectual property rights and guarantees against pirated copies or whatnot than it will with actually addressing the impact that interactive machines that are human-like in appearance will have on human society. This isn't exactly my branch of anthropology, so I can't say that I have much to add to the discussion, but I'm sure someone out there is working on a journal article about this right now. At any rate, it will be interesting to see if the vision of the authors of the Robot Ethics Charter does indeed come to pass.

On another, unrelated note (and keeping in line with my penchant for celebrating my favorite authors on this site), a happy 80th birthday to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose novels make me want to become fluent in Spanish (and visit South America).