As technology advances and animatronics improve, we find ourselves in a bit of a valley. An uncanny valley. It so happens that when humans attempt to recreate their image, a divide occurs between playfully similar and incredibly accurate. This is the reason we find zombies scary- they're us, just a little
wrong. If you've ever seen a "cutting edge" robot or footage of one at a convention, you've seen the horror they can invoke in us. They look a little bit like this:
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It's pretty obvious something's wrong
here, isn't there?
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Upon first glance, you can see that this doesn't look like a robot. Although the creator intended it to look so, the equation is slightly off. Many things about this "woman" tell us she should be a human, and yet a couple things are off about her- this causes our brains some confusion, and in confusion comes fear. This robot's skin is too smooth. Her eyes are a little too wide. The dimples are a little wrong. And if you
watch, it starts to look
a lot more wrong. And if you're still interested, I'd highly recommend
Extra Credit's explanation of the topic from a videogame perspective.
The uncanny valley seems like a bad thing. It would be pretty cool to have robots that look and talk exactly like us, right? Well, that's a claim that science fiction has been debating for decades, so perhaps the uncanny valley serves a purpose. It divides man from machine.
Is the uncanny valley a good thing or a bad thing? You decide.
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