{"id":1256,"date":"2010-12-02T14:08:40","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T19:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2010-12-02T14:11:56","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T19:11:56","slug":"this-apc-for-one-welcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2010\/12\/this-apc-for-one-welcomes\/","title":{"rendered":"This APC, For One, Welcomes…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"APC:<\/p>\n

I was startled to discover these two things at the post office today, the immediate implications of this message:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The US Postal Service has developed a kiosk\/robot capable of experiencing pleasure.<\/li>\n
  2. Said robot is stimulated pleasurably by selling me a stamp.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I wanted to somehow let the robot know that I also appreciated the necessary service it performed. I thought about getting one of these Priority Mail stickers, writing on it “It was a pleasure, also, to be served by you, robot!,” and then slapping it on the side of the Automatic Postal Center. But the robot wouldn’t be able to read that message, would it? Maybe I could hold up a note with a similar message to the camera that is used to surveil patrons of the APC. But then I’d have to wait in line again, and I doubt the robot is capable of handwritten character recognition – it wouldn’t have asked me to type in the zip code if it was.<\/p>\n

    I can only hope that this faithful servant is among the many robot readers of my blog.<\/p>\n

    Also, I feed certain there must be some applications outside of the mail system for pleasure-experiencing robots, although none come to mind right away. Any ideas?<\/p>\n

    (Obligatory self-reference: An Automated Postal Center appears in my 2005 interactive fiction Book and Volume.<\/i>)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was startled to discover these two things at the post office today, the immediate implications of this message: The US Postal Service has developed a kiosk\/robot capable of experiencing pleasure. Said robot is stimulated pleasurably by selling me a stamp. I wanted to somehow let the robot know that I also appreciated the necessary … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “This APC, For One, Welcomes…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,73,72],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hardware","tag-interface","tag-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}