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This funky little robot’s name is Nicobo, and it was created by Panasonic for companionship (tình bạn). It’s loosely catlike; it farts (đánh rắm). It cannot do more than wiggle (lắc lư, ngọ nguậy) its head and its tail and blink (nháy mắt) its unnervingly digital eyes. It can sort of talk. And no, if you’re interested, you cannot buy it.

...I am not sure why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you can buy this robot, which is cute in its way. It’s also not like learning about a small Japanese robot will change your life or even fend off (chống đỡ được, né, tránh, gạt được) existential despair (thất vọng, tuyệt vọng) for more than the time it takes you to get to this paragraph in this article.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here, nestled between the juxtaposition (đặt cạnh nhau, kề nhau) of the logic of production and the reality of widespread human suffering. Nicobo was created by Panasonic in partnership with robotics researchers from Toyohashi University of Technology as a companion — as a technological salve for atomization, capitalist alienation, and good old-fashioned loneliness. After a year of drastically less human touch, we’ve yet another robotic Band-Aid for a gaping psychic wound. I guess it’s cuter than a Zoom call?

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