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The 2001 article that swore we'd all have robot butlers by 2010, where is mine?
I was digging through my dad's old tech magazines last week and found a piece from January 2001 predicting that by 2010 every home would have a robot handling chores and repairs. Fast forward to 2024 and I spent 4 hours on Saturday fighting with a smart vacuum that kept eating my phone charger. You could argue the prediction was just off by a decade or two, but honestly the robot butler part feels more sci-fi than ever. Is the real failure the timeline or the whole idea that we'd trust robots with our homes in the first place? Anyone else got a favorite old-tech promise that still hasn't shown up?
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johnson.lee1mo ago
Saw a piece the other day about how companies stopped pitching robot butlers because people realized they'd have to let a machine roam around their house with a camera and a mop. The smart vacuum eating your charger is exactly why. Nobody wants a robot that learns your floor plan and then runs over your stuff anyway. The real miss was thinking we'd get past the trust issue, not just the tech. These companies sold us the dream of having a live-in robot but nobody stopped to ask if we'd even let it touch the dishes.
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