Futurisms: Calling All Monoliths

Futurisms: Calling All Monoliths: "Back in the eighteenth century, there was a good deal of interest in creating automata, and, like today, it signaled a shifting understanding of the human. Two major tech blogs have recently featured a couple of such projects coming out of Japan. I know between little and nothing about the technical strengths and weaknesses of these robots, or the purposes they are designed to serve. But as an outside observer, I found the contrast between them, and the reactions to them, instructive."