Celebrating our Robots
Toddlers can teach us a thing or two about tech gratitude
Recently, my daughter hit me with one of those nuggets of wisdom that only come out of the mouth of a 3-year old when they are just about to fall asleep but trying their hardest to talk about anything to fight it off.
"Dad, everyone has a birthday...except robots."
I tried my best to muster up an answer that acknowledged her thought process but didn't cause her to wake up and discuss things further.
"Yeah, I guess you're right!"
This statement brought up a lot of feelings for me as a Dad. My little girl was starting to understand birth and mortality and the difference between objects that live and objects that just exist in our living world. Where do robots fit in exactly?
Are robots alive?
We don't have a ton of "robots" in our house, but the Roomba vacuum often acts as a de facto member of our family. And sometimes our daughter lists it in the roll call of family members just after our cat. It's last on the list, but it still makes the cut.
So she has a level of affection and reverence for this object more than other inanimate objects in our home. And yet, she doesn't think our robot has a birthday. That seems sad.
This got me thinking. Why don't we celebrate birthdays for more of our technology? You might laugh at first, but hear me out.
I'd say the technology that most of us hold most dear would be our smart phones right? And these may be the devices that get the closest thing to a birthday treatment. It's especially easy when our phones get named numerically. You know that your iPhone 13 or Pixel 7 is exactly one year old when the iPhone 14 and Pixel 8 are released.
Celebrating our devices
What do we do to celebrate one year of hard work for our little micro-computers? Probably not much. Some of us decide it's time to trade in our pocket partner to upgrade to the latest and greatest version. For those folks, our phones never get to celebrate a second birthday. Maybe there are people who hang on to a phone for two, three, even four (gasp!) years. But I'd wager that each birthday for their device is filled with more cursing that they don't work as they used to, or just complaining about not having enough cash at the moment to upgrade.
What about other things like computers, cars, or maybe even appliances?
Let's face it, our cars/ebikes/mopeds or whatever we use for transportation are really pieces of tech even if we don't always consider them to be. It's fairly easy to celebrate the birthday of a car when it is associated with a model year. When you have a car for 5, 10, 20 years, you appreciate those anniversaries. You also have the option to celebrate milestones based on mileage driven. It seems like there are ample ways to celebrate birthdays for cars. And we may not live in a Transformers world, but they're pretty close to robots in my mind.
But what about things like refrigerators or washing machines? Especially if you have a fancy, modern version these things are very robot-like. How often do we think about how long we've had these items? We really don't. Only when they malfunction do we maybe check the purchase date to see if they're still under warranty. But we never stop and appreciate a refrigerator doing an amazing job of protecting us from food poisoning for the past seven years! That seems worthy of a party in my mind.
Conclusion
Obviously, this whole discussion takes place with my tongue firmly pressed in cheek, but it's worth giving some thought. As we have more and more technology in our lives that listen, learn, and ultimately think for themselves we should probably think about how we handle their longevity and mortality.
No, you don't have to buy a birthday cake for your vacuum cleaner (but that could be fun, and it could clean up the mess from its own party...which is actually kinda sad, nevermind). But I think it could be a worthwhile exercise to go through some of the larger appliances and electronics in your home just to think about their lifespans.
You'll likely develop some level of appreciation for items that seem to work good as new despite a decade in operation. Or maybe you'll have a clearer picture of which items in your smart home will likely need replacing the soonest. Or maybe for simplicity's sake you can just designate one day per year to appreciate all of the technology in your life. Call it a joint birthday party for all the inanimate robots in your home rather than filling your calendar with reminders to get a birthday card for your microwave or dishwasher.
Kids really do say the darnedest things don't they?
Who is the oldest robot in your home? When was the last time you celebrated them?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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