I recently spent my Sunday afternoon geeking out at the Los Angeles convention center for a Wired event called NEXTFEST. The event featured innovations in communication, design, entertainment, exploration, health, play, robots, transportation, security, and green living. It was super cool to see all the new technology…especially the incredibly neat Morpho Towers!

I took video, but my footage does not do the Towers any justice.
Luckily, there is a very clear video on youtube.

OK, so the Morpho Towers and pretty much EVERYTHING else at Nextfest was awesome.
All except this one thing….A ROBOT DJ.

Can this Robotic DJ eventually become a FR*A????
I’m gonna bust out my Hater-ade on this one and say- NO.

At this point, the robot DJ is still very experimental (aka weak-sauce). It can play records, but that’s about it. If you think about it, these two robotic DJ arms are merely super-expensive jukebox players that have the ability to move records forward and backwards in a super-annoying & inefficient way. The AI still does not have an understanding of beat-matching, rhythm, or style. The two robotic arms are limited to:

1. SELECTING A RECORD
2. DROPPING THE RECORD ON THE TURNTABLE
3. LOWERING THE NEEDLE
4. MOVING THE RECORD FORWARD AND BACKWARDS
5. LIFTING THE NEEDLE
6. PICKING UP THE RECORD
7. RETURNING THE RECORD TO ITS ORIGINAL LOCATION

Sounds like a jukebox to me…except for the Forward and Backwards part.

I hope the day NEVER comes, but if fellow DJs start losing gigs to these frickin Robots…I’m gonna go medieval on these soulless pieces of shit with a baseball bat - OFFICE SPACE style. WUT!?

GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL DJ!!!