Articles

Amazon Brings Robots Into Your Home

Your digital media catch-up is right here.

Every Tuesday – for just a few minutes – I join Heather Backman (my old buddy from her days on CHOM FM) on the air at Jack 103 (Rogers Sports & Media) to give a quick blast about the current state of technology, media and Internet culture. We’re calling the segment Tech Tuesday (and we do it in just a few minutes).

What is Tech Tuesday?

If you ever find yourself wondering… What, exactly, is the point of TikTok? How can I make myself look better on a Zoom? Reddit? What’s that about? How do I help my kids be safer online? Who’s the latest creator and streamer that I should be checking out?

You are not alone.

This is what Heather Backman and I discussed this morning over on Jack 103 FM for a couple of minutes:

Say Hello To Astro, Alexa On Wheels – The Verge.

Well, Amazon is at it again. They just announced the launch of a home robot… Astro. Well… is this the cutest thing in the world and the next step (beyond the Roomba) to have roaming robots in our home, or is this a privacy/Big Brother nightmare?

“The Astro, which will initially cost $999.99 and available as a Day 1 Edition product that you can request an invite for the privilege of buying, is Amazon’s most ambitious in-home product yet. Amazon sees it as bringing together many different parts of the company — robotics, AI, home monitoring, cloud services — all into one device. Best described as the love child between a Roomba and an Echo Show smart display, the Astro is meant to be the next step in what Amazons believes to be the seemingly inevitable home robot. Amazon claims the Astro can do a wide variety of things you might want from a home robot. It can map out your floor plan and obey commands to go to a specific room. It can recognize faces and deliver items to a specific person. It can play music and show you the weather and answer questions like any Echo smart display. It can be used for video calls, always keeping you in frame by literally following your movements. It can roam around your house when you aren’t home, making sure everything is okay. It can raise its periscope camera to show you whether you’ve turned the stove off. It can use third-party accessories to record data like blood pressure.”

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. Do you?

App of the week: Booky Call – dating sucks… So date a book?

Once the segment goes live on Jack 103, I will post it here for you to listen in, learn, share and engage….

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1136664481

Mitch Joel · Amazon Brings Robots Into Your Home – Jack 103 FM – October 5th, 2021

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.