So many questions. The world’s largest computer expo took place in Hanover, Germany, last week. It’s called CeBIT (Centrum für Büroautomation, Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation), and David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany were both in attendance. Tobit Software hauled out a few robots who proceeded to do a, er, “sexy” pole dance for a large audience including the two heads of state.
 

 
We wring our hands and stroke our beards thoughtfully at the specter of widespread mechanization and robotization acting as a powerful drag on employment figures, as increasingly, blue-collar jobs are being taken over by robots, and corporations are only too eager to accelerate that process along. But I don’t think anyone had supposed that strippers were among the threatened population.

As always, it’s a little unfair to judge an incipient technology by its first exposure to the public. But it’s not easy to imagine what the target audience for this product is.

Each gyrating bucket of bolts runs $39,500, for those who can afford a really weird private fantasy come true.

It is not known whether Frau Merkel made any disappointed comments about the “Unheimliches Tal” (Uncanny Valley).
 

 
via So Bad So Good

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Extreme pole dancing
Meet “Pole Dance,” The Pole Dancing Doll