alt Hacker Newswe have these all over chicago and everyone hates them. I thought i hate it because they take up public sidewalks ( possibly illegaly) or that they are hurting delivery drivers or that some guy in india is watching me through the creepy camera on the robot.
But those are posthoc rationalizations i just seem to hate them and i cant really explain why.
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Well maybe if all the space was not given to cars there could be some little space for those small lightweight vehicles which is much more efficient than those stupid fat trucks (EDIT: by which I meant SUVs and the likes)
They're an anthropomorphic avatar of everything that is wrong with the business of technology. They're the broken promises of technology with a face. The promise of technology that we've all bought into is a better world, a world that lifts people up, instead we've got these dumb little robots that drive around making it even harder for people to survive. If we lived in a world where everyone's basic needs were met, these little robots would make you feel different.
Two of them have somehow crashed into bus shelters, smashing the glass, most recently on Lawrence iirc. That's good enough reason for me. I use those bus shelters, especially on Lawrence!
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I think it's very rational to hate them for taking up public infrastructure for pedestrians, which already is often neglected in NA cities.
Our cities already deemphasize people being out and about in public spaces, so car-centric, and this is an entirely intolerable insult to injury.
They further alienate folks from jobs in their community, they exacerbate the already artificial friction of just walking to a restaurant and being present in your community.
It represents an impressive amount of awful in a tiny cube.