First, we picked up listening and speaking skills in the lab (prosumerism and outsourcing).
Now, the Lab comes walking into the classroom, in S Korea (in-sourcing).
Voila! The age of full automation finally arrived at a country near you.
Parents have long complained that showing kids DVD’s on the last day of class is a waste of teaching time.
Yet, they are sold on putting their kids up in front of a machine (BTW, these early adopters come from Asia, traditionally respectful of the teaching profession.) Google misses this one since it has been busy getting into fashion and boutique.com.
Man-man interaction. Machine-man interaction. The final frontier will be machine-machine interaction (if not already – that’s what behind our digital transformation to the cloud).
I must give it to them. A country which gives us Tae Kwan Do, 52-hour work week,
and host to recent G-20 summit, also sends robots to teach English to their kids
(after championing fast broadband and online gaming).
Who would have thought out of the Korean War rubles rises such a Phoenix!
Talking about Phoenix. We have a situation in Haiti (Love in the time of cholera).
And a team of Vietel engineers are there to rebuild its ICT infrastructure. I hope them safe passage, knowing how contagious the spread of cholera is.
Back to our robot. In Asia, traditional regard for teacher is above parent (King-Teacher-parent). Now, the new social order is taking over i.e. Machine – Me.
In the US, a survey showed 39% don’t think family is that important (up from 28% in 1978). Any combination of same-sex marriage, single parenting etc… will do.
In fact, it’s predicted that a good percentage of our “Facebook friends” will be virtual entities.
We used to make a big deal of telecommuting. Then, we adapted to virtual office.
Thanks to video and teleconferencing, online University promises to trim the costs of education. So robotic teacher is just another domino (after all, it already assembled our cars at work, cleans our living room , so, why not have it babysit our kids ). I have blogged about Machine and Me.
This blog is about Machine without Me. (The Post Office used to hire workers to sort mail . Then the machine took over before email and fax cut down on hand-written letters.
A few years from now, Facebook in-mail will end email and spam mail.)
I can’t wait to flirt with that robotic nurse when it’s my time to check in a nursing home. (That is, after my surgery assisted largely by robotic surgeons, specializing in prostrate cancer removal).
Her name is Nao, the ethical robot. Gotta go. Time for medication, urges Nao.
Thang Nguyen 555 