Wednesday 9 August 2006

Big in Japan

Both East and the West are facing the grim prospect of declining birth rates and an aging population. Europe has placed its bets on handling the situation with mass immigration of unskilled Muslims while Japan is pinning its hopes on building a new generation of robots to not only run the factories, but also care for the elderly.

Both these plans have their massive downsides and neither is a substitute for the good old-fashioned solution of having babies, but based on what's been happening in such bastions of multiculturalism as Scandinavia, my money is on Japan.

1 comment:

Listy said...

This isn't a brand new concept in Japan. Ideas such as this inspired the 1991 Japanese animated feature Rojun Z, about an experimental robotic bed designed to provide complete and total care for the elderly. However, the bed develops too much personality and ends up running amuck with an old man inside, leaving destruction in its wake. It's all I can think of reading the article.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102812/