I’m so tired and so much is happening. Days like today have become the norm in this last lost year; there is a tragedy happening every second of every day, and if you are lucky enough to be outside the radius of the explosion, you will only be able to perceive what is happening through a screen. Last night, Texas Senator Ted Cruz decided to take a family trip to Cancún, as large areas of his state are without electricity or drinking water amid a deep historical freeze. He’s now coming back, after being embarrassed online for his incredibly cruel choice.
That was the first thing I saw this morning. This was the second.
The name of this funky little robot is Nicobo, and was created by Panasonic for the company. It is vaguely like a cat; he farts. He can’t do more than wag his head and tail and blink his frighteningly digital eyes. You can kind of talk. And no, if you are interested, you cannot buy.
How Gizmodo reports, Panasonic is planning to only make a few hundred Nicobo units; she made them available for pre-order through her own crowdfunding platform, and all were claimed six hours after the campaign’s launch. (Nicobo costs about $ 360.) If you got one, you are expected to pay about $ 10 a month for things like software updates.
I’m not sure why I’m saying this. It’s not like you can buy this robot, which is cute in its own way. It is also not like learning about a small Japanese robot would change your life or even ward off existential despair any longer than it takes you to get to this paragraph in this article.
Perhaps there is a lesson here, nestled between the juxtaposition of the logic of production and the reality of widespread human suffering. Nicobo was created by Panasonic in partnership with robotics researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology as a companion – as a technological balm for atomization, capitalist alienation and good old solitude. After a year of drastically less human contact, we have another robotic Band-Aid for an open psychic wound. I think it’s more beautiful than a Zoom call?