h a l f b a k e r yMake mine a double.
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Jim has decided that it is high time for teddy to learn to read.
Jim has in mind a small child tucked up in bed with teddy on their lap and a favourite book to read. Jim imagines hearing the child squeal 'teddy read!', and the teddy responding with '...well, you will have to turn the pages for me...'.
Jim
reckons there is just about enough gubbins available at the moment to allow your average teddy the means to read any childrens book placed infront of it.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Ruxpin
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 03 2010]
[link]
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<MFD> - WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR - Teddy as seen in the
movie "AI". |
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[Cedar Park] By no means. This could be done perfectly
well with current technology. The reason I don't bun
it is that it's icky. |
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Print a bar-code (or similar) on each page of the book; put
an optical scanner in the plush toy, along with
microprocessor, speech synthesizer, and electronic library
of children's books. The scanner need only read the bar
code; the device then spits out the text for that page,
through the voice synthesizer. If speech synthesizer
doesn't sound good enough, then, instead of storing the
text, store an audio recording of a human reading the
text. There's a marketing opportunity: parents would buy
the bar-coded editions of the children's books (costs extra,
comes with electronic version, keyed to bar codes, for
downloading into teddy). No artificial intelligence. |
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If you want a science-fictional antecedent, rather than
_AI_ I'd nominate the
story (can't recall title) in which all citizens were
psychologically conditioned to be incapable of breaking
the law. A variety of methods were used for the
conditioning, of which the most important were the
computerized teddy bears they all had as children. A
group of dissident psychologists, incapable themselves of
rebelling, sabotaged the teddy of one of their children, in
order to raise a child who would one day be capable of
assassinating the Glorious Leader. When the child reached
adulthood, and was told of his destiny, he bitterly
resented what had been done to him. |
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Well it doesn't read just 'any' old book but...[link] |
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What [Cedar Park] said - only much more emphatically.
Something like:
"You mean, almost precicely, totally, utterly, without doubt entirely - exactly the same as that AI Teddy in the film AI?" |
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But an embedded OCR system insinuated within Teddy's fluff? Actually, that's not a bad idea. |
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This is baked: Teddy Rumpkins. |
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Ahem. Ruxpin [coughlinkcough] |
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Searched the net trying to find it but cant,
however i know this invention already exists to
some extent (even has an mp3 player built in too),
working in the way suggested by mouseposture
where the book is identified to the teddy by
barcode or something similar. The only reason i
know it exists is because i remember hating it,
parents or guardians should read to their children
and not pass off this responsibility to an electrical
appliance. if you cant spare 10 mintues to read to
your child at night perhaps you should have
considered a condom? <end rant> |
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[Mouseposture], it may not be what you have in mind but 'Ticket To Anywhere'
by Damon Knight does mention some kind of conditioning which prevents
crime in passing. I'm not familiar with his writing but if that's part of a world of
his, presumably it's mentioned elsewhere. |
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//if you cant spare 10 mintues to read to your child at night perhaps you should have considered a condom// |
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Hindsight doesn't cut it once you have the toddler wanting to hear a story at bedtime. |
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Also... what portion of those reluctant parents - the ones too stupid to have used a condom - would also have trouble reading at all, let alone reading aloud to a toddler with suitable voice changes to add characterisation to dialogue? |
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I think such a teddy would be bought by lots of parents who would see it as (dole/ welfare/ benefit) money well spent if it means they can go down the pub or sit in front of the telly ignoring the brats. |
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// the ones too stupid to have used a condom // |
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I don't think that's how it works. I think lots of us have a subconscious desire to
have a child and some people think consciously, "oh, it won't matter this one
time", or "it won't happen to me", but are in reality being egged on by their
unconscious to reproduce. Having said that, both our children were
meticulously planned. |
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And then you can take OCR Teddy to the supermarket
and scan all the bar codes! Whee!!! |
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Seriously, I don't understand why something like that
isn't yet a common household toy. There's certainly
been lots of attempts at making toys that talk to each
other or a computer. |
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[The Teddy in "AI" was a full-fledged autonomous
sidekick - an idea for which "AI" is far from the first
source; this is a realistic toy buildable with current
technology. I don't think this is a WTCTTIS.. in that
sense.] |
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