Boing-Boing points us to Danny O'Brien's (brief) adventures with a robot vacuum cleaner (at Danny O'Brien's Oblomovka): ...Still, we did our final moving cash splurge today, and bought a Roomba. And, what do you know, it's actually pretty good: both at cleaning and removing the bejesus out of nearby cats. It backed Dyson into the corner of our living room within minutes - she kept tottering backwards for about ten yards, like she was facing the Feline Terminator. I feel somehow safer knowing that as I sit here, surrounded by crap, writing crap, somewhere else in town my new home is being cleaned by a small beeping robot...
Posted by DeLong at October 23, 2002 11:19 AM | TrackbackWow, I had no idea that the roomba was really for sale to consumers. I figured that like every gizmo of that sorta, is was a curiousity not yet for public consumption. Very neat.
Posted by: Dennis O'Dea on October 23, 2002 12:20 PMI have heard it said that the only thing that really distinguishes humans from other animals is that we are the only species that is not afraid of vacuum cleaners.
Posted by: Curt Wilson on October 23, 2002 01:27 PMSomebody had a joke about this:
"Thousands of years ago, there was an animal which preyed exclusively on cats. We don't know what it looked like, but scientists do know that it souldned exactly like a vacuum cleaner."
Posted by: Barry on October 25, 2002 06:16 AM