When you first see Boston Dynamics' robots, you're surprised. They seem to be a piece of the future in the present.
The movements of these two- to four-legged, inanimate fellows seem so natural that you involuntarily feel pity when they are pushed or hit for demonstration purposes. Pop culture has also discovered the futuristic coolness of these autonomously acting robots. In the latest Star Wars series, for example, some of these four-legged creatures run through the picture and are indistinguishable from the computer-animated companions of the science fiction universe.
These aren't the Droids you're looking for!
But everything bears the stamp of a class, and so it can hardly come as a surprise that - as with the Internet - a major financier of Boston Dynamics is the Yankee military. When the company, founded in 1992, switched to robots, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was the first buyer. The four-legged "BigDog" was designed for them to serve as a mechanical pack mule even in rough terrain. The U.S. company also has no reservations with other imperialist armies, such as the French. The path to its use as a weapons carrier, as a land drone, seems to be no longer a long step from here. Boston Dynamics itself officially opposes the production of armed robots, but its basic research is being taken up by companies that have even fewer scruples.
Even the German cops are already experimenting with Boston Dynamics' dog-like product "Spot": "The remote-controlled robot could use cameras and sensors to explore disaster sites or crime scenes with possible violent offenders [...]." But that's mostly gloomy dreams of the future. It has no immediate applications for the 66,000-euro waste of money, as Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Reul himself admits.
look a these dogs
The reaction has an eye for new technologies and always checks whether they can be used to maintain its rotten system. We should denounce any new, even more perfidious means by which they seek to exploit, monitor and fight the working class and oppressed peoples more efficiently. But in the end, history proves that no revolution or war of liberation has yet failed because of nuclear bombs or killer drones - nor will it fail because of robots.
Speech bubble translation: "That's the PR department. They need a video again. Maybe something with ice skating?"
