Last Saturday, in central Brighton, I met a robot who showed me the future.
My daughter was with me, so he showed her the future, too. It was a future of pluck and ingenuity and optimism. You could get open-source cola there (alongside a tea towel printed with instructions so that you could make your own open-source cola at home), and the whole place smelled of glue guns. Even though the robot needed two friends to help move his cardboard pincer arms about, he was thoroughly convincing when he explained that he knew where the world was heading. And the destination, much like the sun reflecting off his tinfoil and chicken wire body, seemed very bright indeed: a paradise of recycled cardboard, repurposed technology and gleeful open-source cola self-sufficiency.
Most hearteningly, I suspect that in some small way this is the future that video games - and video game culture - are helping to build.
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