Living in the Future
So I guess I'm living in the future now.
I have a self-driving electric car charging in my garage off the solar panels on my roof. I've got a fiber trunk with unholy 'net access speed running to my house. There are daily trips to the moon launching from a dozen major cities, cheap enough to be accessible to the upper middle class. And here I am, seriously pondering if I'm going to buy a robot housekeeper with my annual bonus.
They've been around a while, in some form or another, starting with the robotic vacuum cleaners. Since then, robots have gotten more and more sophisticated, bit by bit. The real innovation was when someone manage to develop a self-navigating humanoid. Applications suddenly expanded every direction at once. Anywhere a human could get around, one of these Cyberwalk models could do just fine.
So now you can get your very own maid for just shy of 20k. Living alone, this would be a godsend. Reviews are all pretty much positive, save for the inevitable DOA issues of all modern technology. At least there are no reports of the 'bots going berserk and killing their owners, like people loved to predict. From what I understand, there's not really enough intelligence there for that kind of thing. They're just computers mounted on a humanoid chassis with enough motor control to do a lot of basic tasks.
There's also maintenance costs to consider, plus the “labor substitution tax” they implemented a few years back. The government wants its money one way or another, ostensibly to help with retraining programs to help those getting displaced by the sudden onslaught of robotic manual labor. It's a complicated issue that I can't really speak to with any intelligence. All I know, is these things are a whole lot cheaper than an actual maid.
So I've been researching for weeks. Now I'm staring at the screen with the “Complete Purchase” button in front of me, next to a rather astronomical number for an online purchase. It shouldn't be a big deal, right? It's just another monetary transaction. But big numbers make me nervous.
Maybe I should go read the reviews again.