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Phil Dick, Your Electric Cat Is... Not Quite Ready
Yume Neko, the highly-anticipated robotic cat from Sega, is finally on sale in Japan.
(Yume Neko demonstration video)
It is realistic, sort of. Take a look at this second video, which shows Yume Neko with a real cat.
(Video shows Yume Neko compares with a real cat)
However, I'm not really sure that this is quite the sort of actual animal substitute that Philip K. Dick had in mind for his non-organic pets in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
...he had picked up the first malfunctioning animal for the day. An electric cat: it lay in the plastic dust-proof carrying cage in the rear of the truck and panted erratically. You'd almost think it was real, Isadore observed as he headed back to the Van Ness Pet Hospital - that carefully misnamed little enterprise which barely existed in the tough, competitive field of false-animal repair...The electric mechanism, within its compellingly authentic-style gray pelt, gurgled and blew bubbles, its vidlenses glassy, its metal jaws locked together.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/3/2007)
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