So the city of Toronto has put a hold on this company that has dumped their robots on city sidewalks for now. Good. It has been an epic struggle for advocates to get proper bike lanes and other form of transportation (other than cars) in place. The last thing we need is to have sidewalks swarming with robots. My take is that these robots make life in the city worse. Let’s see them put onto the streets.
What has been the take of our Canadian media? Basically that robots are cute and people are mean. See this piece in blogTO, People in Toronto are fighting to keep these adorable delivery robots on city sidewalks, and also McLeans.
I guess it was too much trouble to think and report on what other disruptive “innovations” have done to cities, from Uber to Lime.
Innovation is contextual. In the right context, new applications of technology are great. I remain unconvinced that deploying swarms of robots to our sidewalks and waiting to see what happens is one of these examples.
Smart People I Know 