"I for one welcome our robot vacuum overlords," or a life lesson to that effect. On his blog, The Long Tail, Wired honcho Chris Anderson posts about his kids' warm, cuddly, yet well-disciplined relationship with their Roomba Discovery:
Although it's fine at sucking up dirt, finding its way around the room and returning to its charging station, its real achievement is in not only getting the children to clean up their toys first but also tiring them out before bed.And he goes on.This works with three magic phrases:
1. "Roomba's coming out tonight. Clean up your toys or Roomba will eat them!"
2. "If you can clean them up fast you can stay up to watch Roomba!"
3. "Here goes Roomba. Don't let him touch you!"
My favorite comment is from Danny O'Brien, who's daughter apparently defines "robots" as "animals made of plastic."
Robot Child-Herders [the long tail, via boingboing]
Buy Roomba Discovery, a friend with housecleaning benefits, for something under the $279 MSRP at Amazon [amazon.com]
That's hilarious... now I gotta get one of these. And here I thought they'd only be good for getting our cats the exercise they are sorely lacking.
When I was a kid my parents never threatened me with household appliances, which was probably due to the fact that we lived on an alligator farm.