Ummm… yes, they are. If they are genuine droids, I’m in. If D2PO only knows 250 forms of communication, that’s fine with me. If he speaks them all with a pronounced Italian or Finnish accent, that’s fine too. I’m flexible. I just want a tall, gold guy to make my tea and plump my pillows. It would be nice if he were a tad less chatty than C3PO but my husband can tell readers I’m an expert at making interjections while hearing almost nothing at all.
Yes, I want a droid. Forget teaching Siri to order my Starbucks and having to drive all the way to the drive-up window. I will send the droid. I will get the droid to clean the cat-box and plant walls of giant sunflowers around my castle. D2PO can brush out poor Whiner Kitty and then groom Ginger the Wheaten Terrier before dusting the dragon collection. He can help me find my keys.
Imagine. You just say, “I want to buy apples. Find my keys,” and off trots your droid. If you truly have lost the damn things, he can call the Uber for you. Or carry you to the store on your hoverboard. (By the time I get my droid, I expect to own a sleek hoverboard as well.)
By now, I bet readers are just shaking their heads. Does this sound like a waste of powerful technology? Ah. That’s where vision comes into play. In the early 1940s, then-IBM President Thomas Watson supposedly estimated the world market for computers at five. Yet the market rolled on and in 1960, Seymour Cray supplanted the ENIAC of the 1940s and their vacuum-tube technology, creating the CDC 1604, one of the world’s first supercomputers. The tech changed, the tech improved.
Now my phone is close to being a supercomputer. Across America, tiny supercomputers wearing cute, shiny plastic suits are invading homes. And if we can use this mighty technology to keep track of Meghan and Harry, I don’t see why I can’t send D2PO to Starbucks for my latte. It’s the Terran Way. If we ever get to Mars (hint, hint, slow technology people) then it will be the Martian Way.
I mean, hang on, lads and lassies, I’ve got a great idea here. It’s not original, but I think it should be out front and center. What I don’t understand is why those tech gurus are moving so slowly. Where are the droids? Little round vacuums aimlessly bump their way around rooms. Tiles beep at us like R2D2 fragments intent on helping us find our keys. Alexa will turn on the TV, go to Netflix, change the thermostat and distract the kids. But where are the bipedal — or quadrupedal, like I said I’m flexible — devices that will bake me a delicious batch of Tollhouse cookies?
I don’t understand the delay.
