On robopets and the future of companionship 🐶

Today I was going to talk about Robotaxis 🚕, but then I saw Sony's new campaign about foster care for Robodogs and I thought it was somewhere between wholesome and dystopian, so of course I had to cover it.

When someone says Robopet I think of Furbys, those furry coloured creepy toys that you either loved or feared. I was the latter. I also think of Tamagotchis and oh my, I was obsessed, I even had my mum taking care of it when I had exams 😂. There was also Pipi Max, a mechanical dog that would literally pee on people, but since I had a real dog that I loved like an older brother, I didn't feel like getting a fake one 🐶

What I didn't know was that while my little self was obsessing over a few pixels in an egg-shaped plastic device around 1999 🥚, 5000 people in Japan and the United States got their first Aibo, Sony’s Robopet. It could have been the next fancy Tamagotchi, but while a Tamagotchi cost around $20, an Aibo cost over $2500. So yes, they were discontinued after 7 years because nobody was buying them, which… makes sense 🤑