In many science fiction stories robots have replaced people in many areas of society. One good example is the movie I, Robot, which tells story about society where robots are part of every day life. In some level this is not far from this day. At least thatīs what I tought yesterday night. I saw poorly animated 3D model of Father Christmas reading SMS messages of Finns in TV. Artificial look of it wasnīt the most distinctive feature: synthetized speaking with very robotic sounding voice was very far away from my idea how Father Christmas should speak.

Today cooks in kitchens of restaurants are still humans. In this case too, those SMS christmas greetings went trough organic human eye. Still, it feels very odd that very human like, mythic character like Father Christmas is performed by a robot. I donīt think that robot itself is bad. I think there is something wrong with us: why living human being doesnīt fit the requirements to read those christmas greetings? Why people donīt want human being into TV to do that?

A robot can technically read those greetings. However, technology isnīt very advanced yet and it doesnīt sound and look real at all. Even it would sound very real and Father Christmas would look very human, a robot wonīt understand the meaning of those greetings. It cannot see the difference between different kind of SMS messages. Empty and naive message like "hello" is just a word with five letters, just like longer greetings with real feelings toward relatives and friends. Maybe I am naive too, because I want real human Father Christmas to read my messages if I would send those into TV. I donīt care how unfashionable it is. Human element probably never go out of fashion in my sense of reality.