I’ve seen the future at the Wired NextFest in New York City (“the premier future-focused event in the US”), and it’s filled with robots, video games, lasers, synthetic instruments, and corn. Yep, the future looks suspiciously like the present, which is not surprising, if it can currently be shown in an exhibition.
My favorite exhibit was the Atari Rabbit Theatre, featuring 100 electronic bunnies performing an opera. I also enjoyed Alex Hubo (pictured below on the left) from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, “the first ever walking robot with an expressive face.” Very impressive. I can only imagine the long hours that Korea’s brightest scientific minds spent to get a robot to dance to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”
Still, nothing I saw at the NextFest was half as entertaining as a squirrel seen in Brooklyn’s Botanical Garden (pictured below on the right.) It was hanging upside-down by its hind legs from a sunflower, unabashedly feasting on sunflower seeds. I’d like to see a robot try to do that.
