Caring For The Elderly Can Be Robotic

Great article today in The USA Today. You can read that article here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2009-11-04-japan-robots_N.htm

Japan has created robots to care for the elderly. They will remind people when to take their medication, serve as companions, they will sense illness, they will clean house, and perform a myriad of other tasks. My first reaction was if that company goes public I am buying stock because with an aging population this is a great idea. Then I stepped back a bit. Is this a good idea?

What is your reaction to robots carrying for either you or your elderly relatives? Can a robot replace human companionship? I mean think of it, in some ways the Internet has served as a replacement for in person touch and communication. Can robots do that also? I think we all need that hug, that support, that feeling of comrade that we get in real life social settings. But if that isn't possible can robots fill the void?

I'd really like to know you thoughts.

TODAY'S WHO AM 1?

I was born in 1825 and lived to be 75. My autobiographical novel was published in 1859 and updated in 2004. The novel fell into obscurity soon after its publication. In 1982 it achieved national attention when it was rediscovered by a professor. The novel illustrates the injustice of indentured servitude in the antebellum northern United States. I was born in New Hampshire. My father died when I was young and my mother abandoned me at the farm of a well-to-do farmer. In exchange for my labor I received room, board and training in life skills. After the end of my indenture I worked as a house servant and a seamstress in households in southern New Hampshire and in central and western Massachusetts. I married on October 6, 1851 to a man that had been traveling around New England giving lectures based on his life as an escaped slave. He soon confided to me that he was never in bondage and had never seen the South. He abandoned me soon after we were married. Pregnant and ill, I was sent to the Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Poor Farm where my only son was born. Soon after my son was born my husband returned and took us away from the poor farm. I moved to Massachusetts to seek a living. There I wrote the novel and on August 18, 1859 I copyrighted it and deposited a copy in the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. On September 5, 1859, the novel was published by George C. Rand and Avery, a publishing firm in Boston. I remarried in 1870. Sometimes when I spoke I shared the podium with such stalwarts as Victoria Woodhull and Andrew Jackson Davis. I once traveled to Chicago as a delegate to the American Association of Spiritualists convention in 1870. At times I was employed as a nurse and healer ("clairvoyant physician"). I am traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist. Who Am I?