2. ‘The machine/ organism relationships are obsolete, unnecessary’ writes Haraway. In what ways have our relations to machines been theorised?
I Love This Dog” – Children’s Emotional Attachment to the Robotic Dog AIBO
This paper is talking about a free exploration case study on the emotional attachment between the robotic pet AIBO and its user, include children and adults. Besides, observing the interaction and reaction of the users with AIBO is also a main task in this study.
In this study, AIBO is put in a wooden square in a big shopping mall. People can play with AIBO or only observe it freely. Except observe the interaction between AIBO and human, there is 147 participants were selected to finish two questionnaires.
The result of this study is, all of the children was very interested in AIBO and played with it actively. They commented that AIBO is “so cool”, “a nice dog” positively. Moreover, when AIBO was “sleeping”, two brothers returned seven in two days until AIBO was not recharging and play with it. All of these actions are showing that AIBO, a robotic dog has a good relation with children.
On the other hand, there is two kinds of questionnaires which is for children and adult. 77.9% of children think that AIBO could understand them, also the big majority, 91.6% of them quote that AIBO is able to be their playfellow and 90.2% of them say that when they are alone at home, they will feel better if AIBO stay with them. On the adult side, they think that AIBO is suitable for some allergic children or children who is in hospitals and also elder. It proved that AIBO earn the trust from children and can let people feel relieved.
Critical thoughts About Tamagotchi
According to this website, it proposes two examples of metaphorical extensions: Tamagotchi is a living creature and a learning device. Both of them are negating the relation between human and Tamagotchi is “toy and its owner”.
If Tamagotchi is just a “toy”, “skillful” is the only to play this game. However, there is many anecdotal reports point out that because they need to take care of their “virtual pet”, a lot of businessmen trying to delay or prematurely adjourn some important meetings.
Besides, there is a case the a woman left the plane before take-off and refuse to use this airline company again because the staff requested her to turn-of her Tamagotchi device, this is equal to “kill” it.
It is easy to find out that people regard Tamagotchi as a real pet, a living creature. They spend their time, money and love to take care of their “pet” and feel pain if Tamagotchi “dead”.
There is many virtual pet before, like desktop pet. But Tamagotchi get a bigger success than it because people cannot bring them everywhere when Tamagotchi can. On the other hand, different from desktop pet, player cannot pause or turn-off the Tamagotchi, they need to take care it continually, satisfy its need. All of these let it become more authentic.
The Tamagotchi craze and virtual reality --the search for novel forms of entertainment
This article has discussed the reasons of why Tamagotchi is so success and its influence.
Since 1996, there is more than 10 million of Tamagotchi have been sold. The designed of Tamagotchi is for 8 to 15 years old children at first; but now, it gets the huge success in Japanese, from children to adult. According to the sociologist Howard Besser, human has a natural need to take care something or someone generally, and Tamagotchi is very suitable to fulfill this need ----- like take care of a real pet.
On the other hand, Doctor Michael Basquin has been studying the reason of why Tamagotchi get success between children. He found out that Tamagotchi has been used as a method for overcoming a deep loneliness by some children. The loneliness may caused by they lack of affection from their family and the children will have a strong attachment to Tamagotchi, a virtual pet. However, because the attachment is too strong, the children may feel extremely depressed when their virtual pet “die”. Several psychologists has point out that the children are too young to deal with the concept of death, it is very dangerous for them. In South Korea, they have banned the students to bring Tamagotchi to school already.
Besides, Tamagotchi is a means for people to escape from reality and enter to a virtual world. Like many virtual reality games, Tamagotchi provide an escape route for people to evade the problems in real life.
Tamagotchi: an exploration in culture
Kathy mentioned two general theories about Tamagotchi: it is a living creature and a learning device. The spokesperson of Bandai Inc., which is the manufacturer of Tamagotchi, Tomio Motofo said that “It is not a game. You are looking after a space creature whose lifespan depends on how you care for it”. According to this theory, the desire to take care of a pet and sympathy is the motivation to buy a Tamagotchi.
To take care of the virtual pet, the owner needs to carry it all the time. The more time and attention spend on it, the more emotional involvement and attachment. The number of virtual temples and cyber graveyard for Tamagotchi are keep rising that provide a space for the people who lost their virtual pet can mourn for the death of Tamagotchi, and also can receive comfort from the one who understand.
Besides, Tamagotchi is a learning device for children also. As Mary Woodworth, the spokesperson for Bandai Co., U.S Division said, ‘It is more than a toy, it is a learning device. It teaches people to be responsible’. Through look after a virtual pet, children can learn they need to be responsible to their “pet”.
Human-Robot Relationships: The Future of Full-Functionality
According to this paper, it commented that personal robot can be classified into three main categories: tool, service-provider and companion. And this paper focused on discussing the third one.
Fong, the writer of “Robotics and Autonomous Systems” describes a companion robot as, “… robots that have an intrinsic notion of sociality, that develop social skills and bond with people, and that can show empathy and true understanding”. This kind of robot can interact with human, and it can become the teachers and also the playmates. They can form the human-robot relationship.
Furby, a robot can interact with its owner and has emotion. Children would describe Furby as “kind of alive” and also describe its perceived feelings and thoughts in detail. Besides, according to the research, adults would use the concept of a relationship with “semi-alive”, a smart machine. Most of the people prefer an emotional robot because an “inner life” is a key point to keep human interested in a relationship. Besides, studies also show that emotional content in robotic communication can increase human understanding, and a personality component can provide a framework that let people feel more comfortable operating. All these things build up an “actual relationship” between human and robot.
Another example like Paro, a robotic seal with emotive and responsive, has been proved that it can decrease the elderly patients’ stress level; the elder can interact with it similarly to interact with real animal. Therefore, Paro is currently use in hospital and in elder care.
References:
Weiss, Astrid, Daniela Wurhofer and Manfred Tscheligi (2009) ‘“I Love This Dog” – Children’s Emotional Attachment to the Robotic Dog AIBO.’ http://www.springerlink.com/index/h0xh767gu2554800.pdf (accessed 12 March 2011)
Bensky, Xavier and Usman Haque (e.d.) ‘Critical thoughts About Tamagotchi.’ http://www.virtualpet.com/vp/farm/lleg/critical/ana.htm (accessed 12 March 2011)
Deyes, Roberto (1998) ‘The Tamagotchi craze and virtual reality --the search for novel forms of entertainment.’ http://www.madsci.org/dtm/tama.html (accessed 12 March 2011)
McCallum, Kathy (e.d.) ‘Tamagotchi: an exploration in culture.’ http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/murphy7312/JPT3500file/JPT.Projectfile/Jpt/Tamagotchi.html (accessed 13 March 2011)
Jill A., Brady (e.d.) ‘Human-Robot Relationships: The Future of Full-Functionality.’ http://alumni.cs.ucr.edu/~bradyj/HRR.pdf (accessed 13 March 2011)
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