This week the tech-adjacent media (internet-savvy pop culture sites like Jezebel (link is external) and geek lifestyle sites like io9 (link is external) and The Mary Sue (link is external)) is full of stories about a new software called iPet Companion (link is external).
Animal shelters are using it to allow users to play with kitties at the shelters remotely- which is a win for everyone involved, as the kitties get entertainment, the users develop engagement with the kitties and are more likely to adopt (see this article (link is external) about how online engagement drives sales) and the company, Reach-In (link is external), gets their software publicized.
As a marketer, I salute the Reach-In folks for this masterstroke- using the internet to disseminate gamified kitty-based marketing content with a social conscience message hits it out of the park.
You can actually buy the software for your own home and use it to entertain your own kitty, for $349.95 (the doggy version is $395), but what Reach-In is really doing is selling their technology to businesses. And that technology is the future, a future where everyone uses real-time physical interaction applications to move objects over the internet.
The implications are profound- imagine life-saving surgeries performed remotely or artists directing robots to install massive sculptures in a city half a world away.
Earlier this week we wrote about the advances in 3D printing, and how the Shapeways' Factory of the Future (link is external) is basically realizing the future William Gibson described in "All Tomorrow's Parties", where a "Nanofax (link is external)" machine offers technology that "digitally reproduces objects, physically, at a distance."
Reach-In's technology offers the ultimate realization of the remote manipulation technology originally envisioned by Robert Heinlein in the short story "Waldo (link is external)".
When you go to iPet Companion (link is external) to play with the kitties (because who wouldn't? It's the best, cutest, nicest idea ever and it's free!), consider that we may crowd-source remote operation of rock-sampling robots on Mars with iPhones before you know it.
Suzanne on Google plus (link is external)