La Salle Professor Talks To Rich Zeoli About The Fate Of HitchBOT
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- La Salle University Associated Professor of Integrated Science, Business and Technology, Dr. William Weaver, expounded on the fate of HitchBOT, a Canadian robot attempting to hitch hike from Boston to San Francisco, that was attacked and destroyed in Center City over the weekend.
Weaver told Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that HitchBOT's fatal error may have been including Philadelphia on his travel agenda.
"Their first mistake was driving from Boston where they had these lovely tea parties down to Philadelphia where we successfully became the first colony to break away from the evil English empire. Don't repeat history. This is not the place to arrive."
However, he does think a chance exists to save HitchBOT and resurrect his journey.
"Unfortunately, when you lose a very large lion or lose a person, all of them are gone. Thankfully, when we're dealing with robots, as long as his precious little soul happens to be available in the black box, they can go ahead and transfer him into a much more defensible body and he can soldier on and make it to the West Coast."
Weaver also addressed the the scourge of anonymous online bullying, but doesn't see an immediate fix to the problem
"Anonymity of not having your face right there, especially on some of the services like Twitter where you can be, I believe, fairly anonymous, of course, somebody somewhere needs to the actual address of the computer that you're using so eventually the NSA knows who you are, but as far as the person that you're bashing, they don't know who you are really, really quickly. In addition to being anonymous, you're also very remote so the chances of actually any physical harm or maybe even legal harm is small."