Once in Japan, when walking through the streets, watching their TV shows, or when visiting their stores of electronic gadgets, you will sure ask yourself "where do they get the ideas from!!!!"
I do not know how to classify this entry (it may belong to the "On the WEB" part of my blog), but I could not resist commenting on the following video posted on the BBC. It brought to me some nice memories.
Nekomimi (cat´s ears): Technology for daily life
( I assume that posting this link is legal, because the code for embedding it was available at the source)
My first impression when I arrived to Tokyo was that everything ("thing" not "one") was talking to me. Elevators, public phones, ATMs, escalators, ...everything. Greetings, bowing, instructions, apologies. Technology has reached every day´s life.
In Japan, gadgets are on sale at least 6 months before they are exported, and apparently some versions are never exported. Thus, local customers are very important for national companies.
Some gadgets in Japan may appear "useless", "too cute", or even "silly", but when the technology behind is carefully analyzed, woooooow. One example is shown on the video above. Nekomimi reads brain signals and express the feelings of the one who wears the device by leaning the ears, as a cat would do. Can you imagine how many applications would it have to explore the psychology of individuals?
Baby seals (robot) to provide emotional support to sick and elderlies
Another entry on the BBC portal posted back in 2006 demonstrate again that robotics in Japan is the most advanced in the world (together with earthquake and tsunami engineering). As I remember, those seals can feel vitals signals of their owners, and are connected to relatives or to near hospitals when signals fall. As that invention, several domestic applications of robotics are planned to reach common individuals within a society that appears to give high emphasis to the ultimate objective, to a "whole", where individuals are a relevant but replaceable part of the mechanism. Is it the cost of the development?
Just a fun entry, apart from the technical entries I am supposed to post here.
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