Artifact #4 Response

      I didn't know technology had come so far as to make robots that life-like. That droid was almost indistinguishable from a real human. It's scary to think that there will be robots in the near future that you won't be able to tell if they're human or not. Will life-like robots be integrated into the everyday lives of the public? And if so, what purpose will they serve? It makes you wonder how the advancements in technology will change our society. One thing I thought of was going to war. Maybe we will reach a time when we won't have to send soldiers out on the battlefield. We could send robots that we could control from home and save thousands of lives. Will there be negative effects to these great strides in technology? Will people lose their jobs to robots that can perform the same skills at a much more efficient rate? I can't help but wonder what these robots will be used for and what effects they will have on our society. It is extremely exciting though to see how far technology has come. I didn't know that we had come so far as to  make robots that realistic. I thought this was something that was only in movies, using special effects and computer animation, at least for another twenty-five years or so. Maybe I'm just not in the know with the latest technology.
      I seem to always have trouble when using one of those hand-held pencil sharpeners. Either the lead doesn't become very sharp or the lead breaks. I didn't know the two holes were meant for different purposes to sharpen the same pencil. I thought they just allowed for different angles for sharpening pencils. This company is spending time and money to improve on and manufacture the simple tools of a pencil and a pencil sharpener. This goes to show that people are still buying and using pencils. In one of the previous artifacts, William Powers described how society thought past technological advances would affect the way things were done. For example, when printing was developed, many people thought future generations would lose the skill of writing. Now that almost everyone has access to a computer and printing is so easy, along with the extremely high use of the Internet, the art of writing may have been thought to be lost. It just goes to show that when new ways of doing things are invented, the old ways are not just dropped and forgotten, but they are continued to be used in new ways and forms. Pencils are still used quite often in our society and so there is a large market for them. Even with something as simple as a pencil, people still want high quality products. A hand-held pencil sharpener that allows for a long, sharp point has advantages over other products in the same market. A hand-held sharpener that can produce a point equally as good as an electronic sharpener will be valued more because of its mobility and because it takes up less space. I think quality must be the number one demand when trying to sell a product.