KAYAK x Motherboard Present: Rise of the Robots | Little White Lies

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KAYAK x Moth­er­board Present: Rise of the Robots

26 Oct 2015

Laptop displaying USSR hammer and sickle symbol on red background, shadowy figure in the foreground.
Laptop displaying USSR hammer and sickle symbol on red background, shadowy figure in the foreground.
How close are the movies to the real­i­ties of a mech­a­nised future? KAYAK and Moth­er­board investigate.

If the movies have taught us noth­ing else, it’s that the fiery apoc­a­lypse will like­ly ride in on a wave of crack­pot robot tech­nol­o­gy. The ques­tions of sen­tience – of machines attain­ing a lev­el of intel­li­gence that places them on lev­el peg­ging with humans – can be seen in clas­sics such Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, to scads of more recent work such as Alex Garland’s Ex Machi­na and Spike Jonze’ Her – both of explore the the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a very near future in which mech­a­nised prod­ucts become a vital aspect of our emo­tion­al lives.

For the pur­pos­es of dra­mat­ic licence, those films tend to accel­er­ate the lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy while decreas­ing the tem­po­ral gap between the present and future as a way to make these sto­ries con­nect. It enables the view­er to imag­ine them­selves in this brave new world. The ques­tion then remains: where is robot tech­nol­o­gy real­ly at? How long is it going to be before we’re con­duct­ing inti­mate love affairs with com­put­erised voic­es? Will it real­ly be too soon before white chrome humanoids with latex faces and dead eyes will become a threat to the exis­tence of the human race? Or, will every­thing be A‑OK? Will robots remain an eccen­tric pas­time with no real human appli­ca­tion beyond pure nov­el­ty value?

To explore these ques­tions and and more, reporter Ben Fer­gu­son has trav­elled to Tokyo to stay at the Henn-na Hotel which is staffed by bizarre robot­ic effi­gies. As he enters into the lob­by, he’s wel­comed by a talk­ing dinosaur in a bell­boy hat. To find out where break­fast is, he must ask direc­tions from a small robot that resem­bles a child’s toy. Take a peek at his adven­tures on this video which was spon­sored by KAYAK, in which he also stays in one of Japan’s famous cap­sule hotels” and takes a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour through a sur­re­al, neon-lit appro­pri­a­tion of the Dutch land­scape on Japan­ese soil.

Watch out for episode two, which will be drop­ping soon. For more details on KAYAK, head here.

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