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Mother

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Re: Mother

#161

Post by darklajid »

michaelwww wrote: post #3

First I've heard of it, but I had the same reaction as Cringley. Maybe it's an age thing. "Imagine v1 of Big Brother's -- or NSA director Keith Alexander's -- most inflamed fever dream: a sensorbot shaped like a Russian nesting doll wearing a Hindi-cow smile. Then terrifyingly name it "Mother" and build it specifically to monitor as many facets of your personal life as it can. Are you schvitzing yet?" http://www.info…

"schvitzing"?

There are certain stylistic choices a writer can make that labels him as an instant idiot in my world. I chose not to read that link in full due to the word chosen here.

Re: Mother

#162

Post by treenyc »

Very nice, however unless all the hardware and software are open sourced. I will not use it in my real life.

Re: Mother

#163

Post by treenyc »

treenyc wrote: post #162

Very nice, however unless all the hardware and software are open sourced. I will not use it in my real life.

FYI, check out

http://openrtms.org

for more open source alternative for this. Many of these products are nothing innovating in technology.

However, I do think the maker should be rewarded for design, packing (meaning putting everything together).

Re: Mother

#164

Post by manmal »

jfoutz wrote: post #43
devindotcom wrote: post #28

I played with this at CES. The "mother" bot is basically just a router. The little things only sense motion, and when I asked the lady said they had no plans to add any other types of sensitivity - temperature, moisture, light, current, etc. Compared with the other 'internet of things' kits out there battling for visibility, this one doesn't seem original or more useful, only visually striking. The tags are also pret…

weird. the webpage says the motion sensors also sense temperature.

There's also a temperature display in the video on the landing page.

Re: Mother

#165

Post by sneak »

mmanfrin wrote: post #136
allochthon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this has to be the most overtly Huxleyan branding I've seen on a consumer product Which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the product they're selling, which is both cool and odd in a 1984 kind of way.

1984 was Orwell. Huxley was Brave New World.

Also, it seemed to me that the dichotomy set up in BNW is that "natural is good and right, artificial or new is bad" - one that has soured me on Huxley basically since when I first read it.

Re: Mother

#167

Post by mattmanser »

bluejellybean wrote: post #82
amirmc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To summarise your comment: "Bah, Humbug." More seriously, I think you're being way too dismissive. The same train of logic could apply to any tech advances we've had. Email? Use letters. Smartphones? Use a proper computer. Social networks? Use a paper address book. Do you feel the same about those? Compliance is a big problem for medicine. Motivating people (nay, yourself) to be active is a problem. Keeping track of…

I disagree that the same train of logic could be applied to other big tech advances. The pieces of tech you stated are better than the alternative by leaps and bounds. They all reduce the time (and money) it takes to communicate by huge margins. For medication, I can only speak from personal experience and I could be completely off base. As far as motivation, my active friends don't use/care about fitness apps and my…

It's for your inactive friends who want to become active.

One of the things that you'll notice if you go to /r/loseit is how obsessively weight losers will measure everything. It's a way to keep themselves focused and accountable.

I can see the uses for this, just, as many people are saying, very creepy branding.

Re: Mother

#168

Post by RutZap »

I want everything Mother knows/finds out, to be stored locally (i.e. on my pc, not in the cloud), to be kept secure, private and I want to access it at any time from anywhere.... can Mother do that? I don't think so.

Still pretty good but as long as there isn't a privacy promise that would satisfy the basic security principles (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) I don't see it as a successful device.

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