steve barrett

Got a plumbing emergency?

This one’s possessed…

I wonder how much control each has over the body.

You’re looking at Julio, a robot singing to a recording of David Byrne of the Talking Heads. Julio was built by David Hanson and chronicled on Hanson’s blog. Hanson has a great collection of other videos at his website. David says he designed Julio to study the “uncanny valley.” Instead of giving you a wonky description I’ll just include the wikipedia low-down

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness….

…The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that, if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is “almost human”, then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of “strangeness” in the human viewer. In other words, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a good job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.

I find this to be a pretty interesting concept. Something so close to real it’s harder to personify than a cartoon? It’s as though people have an easier time humanizing an object if its obviously not real than they do personifying a 99% accurate recreation.

First of all, this is real. Well, it’s an illustration of a real disorder called Harlequin Ichthyosis. It’s essentially dry skin but it also affects the development of the eyes, mouth, nose, and limbs.

This video creeped me out. I could feel this thing peering deep into my soul and terrorizing me from the inside out. I cannot imagine a birth defect as horrible as this. According to wikipedia most babies borth with Harlequin Ichthyosis die within hours or days, but occasionally one will make it to adulthood.

Meet Ryan González, once a harlequin baby Ryan has become a harlequin man and triathlete. He has to apply lotion to his entire body up to 7 times a day and eats a large amount of food to compensate for all the skin he sheds.

Ryan isn’t the only one; a girl named Lucy from somewhere in Europe has also survived Harlequin Ichthyosis into adulthood. DNA samples and heavy research into the disorder has traced it back to a genetic disorder that causes a specific protein to not function.

You have to somehow wonder how these people find the courage to carry on with such a dabilitating disorder, although I’m sure if you were to ask one of them how they do it they would shrug you off as though it’s a dumb question. I suppose it is, what other option do you have, and what other life have you known when this is how you are and how you’ve always been. It’s who you are. Regardless, I have endless respect.

update: August 31, 2008

Caught this on liveleak. A baby was bord with Harlequin Icthyosis in Turkey.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.