A FRIGHTENING PREDICTION:
I literally experience an emotional connection to my automobile because of the features I mentioned. Someday all of our technology will learn to emotionally manipulate us. Your smartphone is already doing it. Your desktop computer has been doing it for years. As your possessions learn to fill your emotional void, your need for the comfort of other humans will continue to decrease. Eventually we’ll be a society of sociopaths. I’m already halfway there.
That prediction is entirely serious, by the way. I do believe we will transfer our emotional connections from humans to technology, with or without actual robots. It might take a generation or two, but it’s coming. And it probably isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Put that together with the whole President Robama thing, and well . . . it’s scary, all right.