I don't even know why the scientists keep making them!

If you believe anyone on TV (which I'm trying not to do anymore), the hot adult gift (that you can't get at Pleasure Palace, gifts which wouldn't be reported on network TV anyway, thank you very much, Janet Jackson) this year was the Robosapien, which is...a robot. A robot that does...stuff. Like pick up...things. And move. It definitely moves, and you control it, which I suppose makes lonely people feel powerful and needed.

The implied point of this Robosapien, though, is that it's supposed to make us feel excited about the limitless possibilities of the future, where we no longer have to stoop down to pick up our own styrofoam cups, but we can push a few dozen buttons on the remote control of our robots who, after being fitted with a special attachment, can pick them up for us! What a beautiful world!

So I'm just going to say it: I'm disappointed and slightly depressed that robot technology doesn't seem to have advanced in the last twenty years. Every handful of years or so, the latest hot gift is a household robot, and they just never seem to be anything more than a neat toy that picks up things and moves for a little while. And yes, we have robot vacuum cleaners, but it just doesn't seem like robot technology is keeping up with computer technology and it's WAY behind what we all expected from the year 2004, let alone 2005.

At this rate, the Robot Revolution will never happen in my lifetime. Even if all the Robosapiens and robot vacuums rise up, we could squash it in about five minutes with a baseball bat and a few well-placed boot stomps and happily return to picking up our own cups and sweeping with a wooden broom. And isn't that the point of the Robot Revolution? That we'll be left helpless without them? They're going to need to do a lot more before we'll feel helpless.

I guess it's up to the computers now. And Jason Korzen.