Let's Visit the Uncanny Valley

Today's post is about the Uncanny Valley. Well, actually it's just an excuse to post a few videos of disturbing human-like robots and animation, but in case you haven't heard of the Uncanny Valley I'll explain it. The idea of the Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis which originally referred to robotics, referring to peoples' reaction to robots that look and act nearly human but not quite. As robots look and act more like humans, the reaction to them becomes more positive until a point at which it drops down into a 'valley' of revulsion/negative reaction. While this originally referred to robotics, it is now often used to refer to anything that is unsettlingly human-like.
A quote from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe fits this pretty well: "...when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet." (funny when you consider this advice was given to the children by a talking Beaver.)

The Uncanny Valley:

For your enjoyment (or terror), here are a few creepy videos.


This video, "The Cat With Hands" is creepy even without the foray into the Valley.



The previous example was intentionally creepy. This robot, in contrast, is not supposed to be.


Another robot, this one a little girl.





This may not be an example, but somehow the idea of a kid that size just scares me.

The October Game

Welcome to October! For an explanation of what this is about, see my previous post "31 Days of Halloween."
This is Day One! Today I would like to share a Halloween-themed short story by Ray Bradbury.

"The October Game"

He  put  the  gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.
   No,  not  that  way.  Louise wouldn't suffer. It was very important
that   this   thing   have,   above  all  duration.  Duration  through
imagination. How to prolong the suffering? How, first of all, to bring
it about? Well.
   The  man  standing  before  the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his
cuff-links together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by
switftly on the street below, outside this warm two-storey house, like
so many grey mice the children, like so many leaves.
   By  the  sound  of the children you knew the calendar day. By their
screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the
year.  October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut
pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax. 
 
Read the rest here:

http://lib.ru/INOFANT/BRADBURY/october.txt

31 Days of Halloween

I have always said that Halloween ought to start on October first. One year I even proclaimed that I would refer to October as a month as Halloween instead, although I forgot to keep it up about a day later... Halloween is my favorite holiday and I want to keep up the Halloween spirit (not to be confused with Spirit Halloween) all month. In fact it is only September first and I already have Halloween on the brain, but I thought this would be too early for most people to start getting in the swing of things. So this year, I have decided to post all things Halloween related on this blog all month from October 1st to October 31st. It could be a video, photos, Halloween events, memories from past Halloweens or just my take on Halloween related topics.
I will also be posting abbreviated versions on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, with links back to this blog.

So get ready for Halloween!