A famous hitchhiking robot has been destroyed in Philadelphia. The robot was created by Canadian researchers who wanted to see if the robot could cross the country. It successfully travelled Canada, and Europe but met an untimely end in the City of Brotherly Love. Ana Kasparian (The Point), Karamo Brown, and Becca Frucht (Pop Sugar) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.
Does this say something about Americans? Does it mean that American are violent? Let us know in the comments below.
Read more here: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/parents-…
“HITCHBOT, A ONE-YEAR-OLD device from Port Credit, Ontario, died early in the morning of August 1, 2015 in Philadelphia. The three-foot-tall hitchhiking robot, a high-tech Flat Stanley that depended on the kindness of strangers to tour this great planet, passed away due to decapitation and dismemberment by an unknown assailant. It is survived by its sibling, KulturBOT, its parents, Dr. David Smith and Dr. Frauke Zeller, and a dozen family members.
There are a few ways to look at the savage dismemberment of the 25-pound HitchBOT. There’s “of course this happened, because people are generally awful,” or “of course this happened in America after HitchBOT travelled unharmed in other countries, because Americans are obnoxious.” Or, “of course this happened in Philly, where fans once lashed out at Santa Claus.”
Comments
I agree this is one example, and maybe not even a great one, of Americans being surprisingly violent. The point is it’s not an isolated example.
The link below is to a segment from a BBC series called Top Gear, on which the hosts have traveled the world pretty widely doing various car-related stunts, often offending people along the way. They’ve been in deep in jungles, mountains, and deserts. They’ve been to the north pole, the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and parts of Africa where AK-47s are ubiquitous. Nevertheless, the hosts all agreed that the never feared more for their lives than in Alabama, where rocks were thrown at them at a gas station, and they were subsequently chased down the road for two hours by angry locals. (Yes, they were angry for a reason.)
The first link is to a portion of the original segment as aired, and the second link is to a CNN segment discussing the incident with the hosts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4“>