Humanoids and the tech-­industry hype machine

A Harpers contributer does the legwork and gets a head start on deflating the next dumb hype cycle.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    7·
    4 days ago

    data which for menial tasks doesnt exist yet.

    This reminds me over an old old furore here in Sweden. A female researcher at a largish university made a study of how cleaners … cleaned. How bathrooms, kitchens etc were constructed and how workers had to move and lift to do their work.

    This was almost universally derided - “who does science on cleaning???”, but of course the intent was serious. Lots of people clean, if we design better workspaces, we reduce injuries and RSI etc, and maybe make it easier for less skilled people to clean. But becaseu both the author and the subjected were coded female, the reactionaries had conniptions.

    Anyway that won’t help humanoid robots. Just thought about it

    Edit found an article in Swedish about it, year was 1985. Nowadays bathroom fixtures are constructed after her recommendations

    https://arbetet.se/2009/02/26/gudrun-linns-forskningpverkar-hela-byggsverige/

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      4 days ago

      Sounds a bit like a Swedish heiress to Lillian Gilbreth. My wife has had some mobility issues and has lamented that the work that went into designing more ergonomic and accessible kitchens in the 40s and 50s was largely abandoned and ignored in more recent homes.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        In addition to jointly running Gilbreth, Incorporated, their business and engineering consulting firm, Lillian and Frank wrote numerous publications as sole authors, as well as co-authoring multiple books and more than fifty papers on a variety of scientific topics. However, in their joint publications, Lillian was not always named as a co-author, possibly due to publishers’ concerns about naming a female writer. Although her credentials included a doctorate in psychology, she was less frequently credited in their joint publications than her husband, who did not attend college.[11][25]

        Infuriating