Yesterday, I went to my daughter’s school to pick her up. She was doing some Broadway songs
with friends (thus, no need for a paternity test……), so I just stood at a distance to not interrupt them. I was startled when a robot rolled up next to me and, from the face projected on the video monitor, asked me if I knew where the back-to-school night meeting was. I told the person on the screen that it was on the second floor (and, since we were near the top of the stairs, I had an image of this thing tumbling down the stairway, in a willy-nilly robot way).
The robot-man told me thank you, he would meet them down there – – then he rolled back to his charging station, and I noticed an identical robot on the lower floor start up and roll toward the gathering of people.
When the video-face was talking to me, I noticed at the bottom of the screen were the words “Scott Hassan – Founder Suitable Technologies.” I was vaguely familiar with Suitable, since they are here in town, but not with Scott. So I Googled him and found out, appropriately enough, he was one of Google’s first programmers (and, do the math, therefore a billionaire). His new gig is the aforementioned robot company which, frankly, I think is pretty cool.
Of course, later that day I pondered how each of us dads spent our time. I imagine Mr. Hassan had a series of interesting meetings and planning engagements for his high-tech firm, whereas I spent my day with my stomach tied in knots worrying about whatever garbage spewed out of the mouth of a white-haired troll. It’s enough to make me want to stick a gun in my mouth, but that’s one of the hazards of these private schools in Silicon Valley; it’s easy to feel really, really inadequate.
UPDATE: Iggy gave us a valuable tidbit of popular culture to augment this post:
