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A lot of Japan's embrace of robots is not so much due to what robots do, but due to what they represent: modernity, luxury, precision, etc. For a nursing care
by sgdesign 9y ago
A lot of Japan's embrace of robots is not so much due to what robots do, but due to what they represent: modernity, luxury, precision, etc.
For a nursing care facility, being able to tout a robot nurse is great for marketing. Whether or not the robot is useful is almost secondary.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoIt is my understanding that Japan has a horrific birth rate and ratio of elderly to working-age adults, necessitating nursing care robots. In many Western countries, the answer to these problems has been immigration. However, Japan is famously insular; a prospective immigrant cannot hope to naturalize as a Japanese citizen they way one could in, say, Canada or Germany. So Japan is otherwise stuck with three options: let the elderly wither and die with little care or dignity, commit a vast portion of Japan’s relatively scarce workforce to take care of its elders, or robots. Japan picks robots.
- sgdesign 9y agoI've heard that too but I don't think it makes any kind of sense from a practical point of view, and I suspect it might just be a nice theory. These "nursing care robots" are very far from being able to do even 1/10th of what a normal human worker can.
- lovemenot 9y agoI don't understand why you excluded immigration as one of those choices. In fact, nurses have been trickling in from Philippines and elsewhere. This program could be expanded considerably soon, as we have already seen with retail, construction and other sectors.