TasedBro

TASER International’s marketing is surreal at times. Spend a few minutes on their website and you’ll sometimes forget to remind yourself that this isn’t an evil corporation from an 80s action movie or the latest first-person shooter–this is a real company. And damn are they visionary.

Last year, a strategic alliance was announced between TASER International and iRobot, makers of both domestic (the Roomba) and military robots. With the goal of eventually fitting robots with tasers, both companies hope to someday remove the police brutality’s intimacy of yesteryear. Long gone are the days you could enjoy a bit of whisky on the breath of a copper before you inspect the wrong end of a blackjack. The details of the new partnership were vague, but TASER did release a bit of a teaser video to get your testosterone pumping:

I appreciate the dramatic flair. You’d think this was a trailer for next summer’s big disaster-thriller, or at least a scientology promo film.

So who is the future’s most dangerous subject? With what enemy will future wars be fought for the salvation of all mankind? Muslim extremists? Invading space aliens? Less-friendly robots? Korea? Global climate change? An astroid? A super-virus?

Nope. The answer was much more obvious.

And the Future’s Most Dangerous Subject Is:

The Future is Bright

Fantastic. Even in the future, unarmed black dudes aren’t getting a break. It’s good to see that the first generation of crime-fighting robots have already grasped the basics of good ‘ol American crime-fighting–racial profiling.

And this from the company famous for building an automatic vacuum cleaner that, after two minutes of hard cleaning, gets stuck under a desk and and cries out with an “uh-oh” beep, making you actually feel sorry for how helpless it is. I’m sure there’s absolutely no chance that this new army sentient beings will malfunction in any way. Or maybe they’ll accidentally take down a few innocent black dudes then turn to us with the same “uh-oh” beep as the buck gets passed every which way.

Clearly TASER International and iRobot are attempting to undo the one true future that Will Smith has already written for humanity. “Uh-oh!”

Tags: racial profiling, robots, TASER International