if i can offer a diverging perspective: a lot of people who are really passionate about and innovating in engineering are doing so because similar media and toys from their childhood captured their imaginations. while i agree the robot dog can be uncanny, it is very much someone’s baby i.e. i understand people’s hesitance to engage with and adopt new technologies, but i’ve also seen the development side of things and know how much love goes into getting here.

a perception i’ve seen of the robot dog is that it’s a meaningless technology meant to replace social companionship but its intended use cases are quite cool!

all that being said, the death of fun tech under capitalism is very sad, and i say this as someone who’s had to change gears on projects because it wasn’t profitable enough ☹️