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January 02, 2006
Creepy toys as teaching opportunities
Lileks manages to give his young daughter a little insight into parenthood.
Santa brought Gnat an “Amazing Amanda” doll, a creepy little robot with elemental voice-recognition software. It asks a question – what shall we play now, Mommy? Patty Cake? Make a Face? Disconnect the carbon dioxide monitor and start the car in the garage? Plunge a Knife Into Daddy’s Eye socket? – and it understands your reply. It does not shut up unless you tell it to sleep, whereupon it obligingly switches off.
It knows what time of day it is, too. Knows the date. Why? Because Daddy set it. It’s like setting any sort of electronic device, except that it answers back in a baby voice. This is all very cute until it says, in the same voice, “Do you want me to observe Daylight Savings Time?” Yes, I said. “Okay! I’ll observe Daylight Savings Time!” Damn thing knows more than it’s letting on, I’ll tell you that.
Christmas morning I brought it to Gnat as she was sleeping, and woke it up. “Good morning Mommy!” it said.
“Go to sleep, Amanda,” Gnat groaned.
Hah!
“Now I know what it’s like to be a parent,” she said later.
Oh, you have no idea, kid; wait until you’re walking around a busy park calling out Amanda’s name, and she doesn’t answer, and you feel that familiar dank wet snake curl around your heart for just a second, maybe two. Then you’ll start to begin to have an inkling of the emanation of the penumbra of knowing.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 2, 2006 08:05 AM