Two stories have come to my attention in the last two days. One, in which Japan might play a leading role in the future and another, featuring a developing trend in Japan.
The first one is sure to raise some eyebrows but it may be hopeful news for the bashful and the socially awkward. Author, chess player and computer expert David Levy predicts in his new book Love + Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships that by the year 2050 people deprived of human love might find solace in the company of robots.
If you’re younger than 35, you’ll probably live long enough to put David Levy’s prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we’ll be creating robots so life like, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we’ll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good.
Levy lays out his vision of a Brave New Carnal World in Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, which, despite its extended riffs on sex toys through the ages, is a snigger-free book. Levy’s no Al Goldstein. Rather he’s a 62-year-old British chess master turned artificial-intelligence expert persuaded that robot sex can brighten the lives of many, many unhappy people. "Great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7,” he writes on the final page of the book. What’s not to like?
It sounds like a mighty tall order. A machine with skin that feels like ours? With our physical dexterity? And, most important, with a mind like ours – imperfectly rational, sometimes emotionally intelligent, sometimes emotionally dumb?..
"I think it’s a reasonable assumption,” Levy said in a telephone interview from his home in London. He lays out his case in a voice that’s calm, rational, almost flat, more geeky than goatish….
Smart money never bets against technological advances, but it helps if you stack the deck. "The automaton simulates man when man has been defined in an automaton’s way," literary critic Hugh Kenner wrote. Is that what Levy does? ……
So who will avail themselves of 21st-century sexbots?
Sad cases, for one, people so physically unattractive or anti-social or isolated or emotionally crippled that they have trouble finding human romance. People who love their computers more than their fellows. Hey, they’re out there already… (The NYT review of Levy’s book here)
The second news item involves Japan’s increasing angst over the prospect of losing its long held edge as the economic and scientific leader in Asia. This nervousness is evidently leading the Japanese to seek remedial answers within the Asian milieu. If true, this is a very interesting phenomenon only because it means that Japan may now turn to its Asian neighbors for self improvement after more than a century of looking westward for progressive ideas.
MITAKA, Japan – Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.
Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
Bookstores are filled with titles like "Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills" and "The Unknown Secrets of the Indians." Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.
And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.
At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.
Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.
Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians.
Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.
But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.
Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “Looking for Love and Learning (In the Wrong Places?)”
With regards to the Japanese falling for Indian education story, I think Amardeep had it right as far as the ‘Dubious Trend Line’ description in his post on SM, just like the ‘wombs-r-us’ report.
A look at the pressroom for the Little Angels School turned up these two informative links: Link 1
Link 2
From this, it’s quite evident that the fascination is with the use of the English medium to teach the students, not so much the math concepts being taught.
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I agree. The story is highly exaggerated.
In my opinion, Japan would do well to not emulate the educational system of India. With a 99% literacy rate and a very egalitarian system of early education (as opposed to the elitist one in India), Japan is doing quite well. But it is a very faddish country, picking up on anything that seems to be on the cutting edge of success anywhere. So perhaps they will tinker around a bit with vedic math etc. for a while and then decide that things are working quite well as they are – no need to fix something that’s not broken. The English medium thing may be something that intrigues the Japanese though. They are eager to learn to “speak” English. But do they know that the much vaunted English medium education is accessible to only a handful in India?
So what in your opinion is the reason for the latest sensationalistic DBL on India in the American MSM? Whatever. As long as they can move away from caste, cows and arranged marriage.
As for the other story here about Robo Love, that too may be a developing trend in Japan. The Japanese health minister who recently called women “birth giving machines” while lamenting his country’s falling birth rate, made another interesting comment. He said that young Japanese boys prefer the “safe” company of cartoon Anime girls to that of real ones because they are afraid of being hurt by those living, breathing birth giving machines. So, who knows? Robo-Love may already be here. That would explain the falling birth rates too.
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More DBL today- the resurrection of the 2 month old news report about the Taj Mahal tourists no longer being allowed to pay in dollars.
I’m still scratching my head over a suitable conspiracy theory to fit this sudden spate of recycled India stories and other DBLs. Maybe the Chinese have warned the news corps to lay off the China-bashing and they feel India is a safer target?
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