He waffled about what the book was really about. At first he said it was censorship. Later in life he said it was intended as a searing indictment of the looming cultural distraction of technology, most notably television according to his biographer Sam Weller.
Which is wild considering he wrote scripts for the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, then had Ray Bradbury Theater in the 80s.
I always hated the obvious disdain with which the author treats a woman doing a teleplay in her own home.
Acting is a skill, and recreation has value. If a person sitting in their own living room doing VR episodes of TV where they play a part, that doesn't make them vapid or foolish or represent an unwise use of their time.
I have watched movies that have had an equal lack of need of my input that still managed to make me think and feel you condescending prick! And I have read books with which I've had infinitely less intellectual involvement than a woman pretending to be a character in a soap opera! Take your elitist victimization fetish and shove it up your ass!
...sorry, I actually love parts of Fahrenheit 451. But I've been angry about this for years. The "hero" of the story denigrating his own wife because of how he views her hobby? Because in his mind, it isn't as intellectually stimulating as his new, illegal hobby? What an asshole.
this is what the company behind this says it's useful for:
first two sound pretty reasonable to me, as someone with a very basic understanding of wildfire control.
snow and ice removal, i mean it's definitely gonna do that but i can't think of any place where it would be necessary to use a robot dog for it.
the last one's self explanatory.
i'd love to be optimistic and say that this robot will only get used for harmless or good deeds but i know this thing is already being retrofitted by cops to shoot tear gas or some bullshit
It's a delightful PR gimmick by a most definitely not a tech company, since there's not much cutting edge technology going on in the world of "flamethrowers are perfectly legal in America and that's our business model".
In addition to strapping a flamethrower to a generic quadruped robot, they also strapped one to a drone.
Among my favourite takes on the Culture is, I think, from Consider Phlebas: that the Minds basically keep humanity as pets, and everyone is just fine with that thank you very much.
Because "humanity" isn't really screwed, just most members of humanity. I hate this assumption that climate catastrophe or nuclear war will be a certain end. No it won't. Humans will survive, maybe even a large percentage of them. LIFE GOES ON.
Maybe you want death because trying to improve things is "too hard," but I want to live. I hold onto hope because life is more fulfilling that way. You're just justifying apathy by assuming we're all going to die when it's actually unlikely to happen.
Now we just need a "Rat Thing". That will solidify the world into a corporotacracy where the Liberterian ideal of Corporate Profits over everything and no pesky regulations to get in the way of profits.
That Boston dynamics robot runs at like 4 miles an hour. The fastest robot dog runs at like almost 12 or something.
Average running speed for humans is between 6.4 and 8 mph depending on gender, etc. And if the obesity rates are correct, I think that it's probably a lot lower and for incredibly short bursts if anything.