Samsonite: Making a Strong Case for Human Evolution

Introducing PURA

Chapter One

The Personal Use Robotic Assistant (PURA) was introduced at the Robotics Summit & Expo held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 2032. In its compacted and static transport mode, the PURA measured 71.12 cm high, 48.26 cm wide by 27.94 cm, or the exact dimensions of the largest size piece of polycarbonate luggage manufactured by Samsonite.

The project was originally conceived and sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 2030, and proposed for consideration as a competitive project to the department heads of the highest-ranking engineering and technical colleges and universities in the United States, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, the University of Southern California at Berkley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Many of the professors who received the proposal initially believed it to be a prank, but after reading through the introduction they began to grasp the implications of such a program, and passed the proposal along to heads of other departments within their schools for review, including those that specialized in economics, philosophy, anthropology, industrial design, and ethics.

The proposal was sent with a personal letter that provided the rationale for the project, followed by a short introduction and an outline of what the visionaries, Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland and Rodney Brooks of MIT, hoped would be achieved in a collaborative white paper they had written in 2024 on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In the paper the scientists addressed how a collaboration between humans and robots might find new ways to reverse the damage done to the atmosphere and also to find peaceful solutions to conflict between humans on Earth.

In their paper, Shneiderman and Brooks assembled lists of considerations for the creation and development of Personal Assistants in their proposal of what they called PURAs:

Personal Use Robotic Assistant (PURA): Human Considerations

1. Economic Benefits

Increased Productivity: Robots could automate many mundane tasks, freeing up humans to focus on more complex and creative work. This could lead to increased productivity and economic growth.

Job Creation: The development, manufacturing, and maintenance of robots could create new jobs in various industries, such as engineering, technology, and manufacturing.

Reduced Costs: By automating tasks, businesses could potentially reduce labor costs and improve efficiency.

2. Economic Challenges

Job Displacement: The widespread adoption of robots could lead to job displacement in certain sectors, particularly those involving repetitive or low-skilled tasks.

Income Inequality: If the benefits of robotic technology are not distributed equitably, it could exacerbate existing income inequality.

Infrastructure Costs: The widespread use of robots would likely require significant investments in infrastructure, such as charging stations, repair facilities, and data networks.

3. Economic Feasibility

The economic feasibility of providing a personal robotic assistant to everyone on the planet depends on several factors:

Cost of Production: The cost of manufacturing and maintaining robots would need to decrease significantly to make them affordable for a large portion of the population.

Energy Consumption: The energy required to power robots could be a significant cost factor, particularly if they are widely used.

Technological Advancements: Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, and energy storage could help to reduce costs and improve the capabilities of personal robots.

Human Purpose and Well-being: To ensure that the widespread use of robots does not diminish human purpose or well-being, it is essential to consider the following:

Ethical Considerations: The development and use of robots should be guided by ethical principles to avoid unintended negative consequences.

Education and Training: As robots become more prevalent, there will be a need for education and training to help people adapt to the changing nature of work.

Social Impact: The introduction of robots into society could have significant social implications, such as changes in relationships, leisure activities, and community structures.

The second page included an accounting of the engineering challenges to be addressed by applicants. This segment was headed by the title:

Potential Developmental Considerations:

The ability to produce robots on a large scale and at a low cost is essential for widespread adoption. This requires efficient manufacturing processes and supply chain management.

Standardization: Standardizing components and design can streamline production and reduce costs.

2. Durability and Reliability:

Robust design: Robots must be durable enough to withstand everyday use and environmental factors. This requires careful design and testing.

Reliability: Robots must be reliable and able to perform their tasks consistently over time. This involves robust hardware and software.

3. Maintenance and Repair:

Modularity: Designing robots with modular components can simplify maintenance and repair.

Self-diagnostics: Robots should be able to diagnose and report issues, making maintenance more efficient.

Remote diagnostics and updates: Enabling remote access for diagnostics and updates can reduce downtime and costs.

4. Safety and Security:

Safety features: Robots must be designed with safety features to prevent accidents or injuries.

Security: Protecting robots from hacking and unauthorized access is crucial to prevent misuse and ensure privacy.

5. Human-Robot Interaction:

Intuitive interfaces: Robots should have user-friendly interfaces that are easy for people of all ages and abilities to understand.

Social intelligence: Robots may need to exhibit social intelligence to interact effectively with humans.

6. Energy Efficiency and Sustainability:

Battery life: Robots must have sufficient battery life to perform their tasks without frequent recharging.

Energy-efficient components: Using energy-efficient components can reduce operating costs and environmental impact.

7. Regulatory Compliance:

Safety standards: Robots must comply with relevant safety standards and regulations.

8. Legal and ethical considerations: The development and use of robots must adhere to legal and ethical guidelines.

Addressing these challenges will require significant advancements in robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, and other related fields.

In the final stretches of the competition, the Stanford team achieved many of the objectives, and was awarded the $10,000 PURA Innovation Prize for its prototype. The team realized at the onset that their attempt would not solve every problem or address every challenge listed in the proposal.

Their team leader, Ken Ashbourne, who taught at Stanford and was proficient in physics, sought input from multiple departments within the Stanford community. In addition to graduate engineering students of various disciplines, the team included four students enrolled in religious studies, two professors from its anthropology department and Sigma Medolf, a rising star in his senior year of the Engineering program at Stanford and a student of the Hasso Plattner Institute d.school at the university.

Sigma, whose family originally hailed from Greece, had an unorthodox approach to design that rarely began with hand-drawn sketches or 3D renderings, but with the feeling users established with a product, a method similar to the Chinese art of feng shui. Ashbourne believed that users of the personal assistant should be comfortable living with a PURA, both in its compact storage mode or when transformed, like a Swiss Army Knife, into its many configurations. As an engineer Ashbourne understood the importance of weight and balance in creating a tool, but had little awareness of the aesthetics of a product that invited the user to touch it, feel its vibrations or use it over other possible concepts.

Ashbourne had experienced Sigma’s magic first-hand in a demonstration presented by the young designer at the Cantor Arts Center at the conclusion of his first year of study at the d.school.

Prior to the presentation, Sigma had laid out an assortment of 20 tools and implements, both old and new, some of which he admitted were his design. During the introduction, he asked the audience to read the explanation card on each tool and then to pick each one up and manipulate it in some fashion.

After being led through the process, the users were asked to close their eyes for 30 seconds and think about the tools. When they opened their eyes they were asked to select only three of the 20 and to write down the numbers imprinted on their chosen items and return the cards to him.

After all of the cards were handed in, Sigma, before looking at the results, traveled around the display and pointed to four of the tools displayed, after which every other tool and implement was removed from the display table.

Comfort is felt differently by every individual, Sigma began. "And most things we touch in our lives stimulate our emotions. As a designer, my job is to provide users with an experience. If I design a Halloween witch, it should be scary. If I produce a Valentine’s card, it should evoke a feeling of love and happiness. And if I create a tool, it should be easy to use and feel comfortable in my hand as well as be serviceable.

"Not everyone experiences the same emotions, but most individuals have similar reactions when shown a scary movie, or when they see an act of violence on the movie screen.

Without looking at the numbers you selected, I was unable to predict the order of the devices you individually selected, but I believe that all of you had three of the four implements in the display on your lists.

Sigma paused while the people in attendance nodded their heads and showed their cards to their neighbors and then to Sigma. One of the group of 58 people in attendance called out, I liked number twelve and it isn’t one of the four selected.

What’s your name? Sigma asked.

Tom. Tom Riley!

Bravo, Mr. Riley. You are an individualist, said Sigma.

Sigma then reached into his pocket and pulled out his three choices with number twelve at the top of his list.

The audience applauded Tom and Sigma spoke. "Everyone doesn’t enjoy the same food, but burgers and French fries are usually on the list of favorites of most non-vegetarian Americans.

"Neither food is particularly healthy, and certainly not the fanciest. But both are at the top of the list of the best-loved meals in America.

"As a product designer, my job is to make you comfortable with any product I design. My attempt is to seduce you with my choice of colors and materials, the way the product feels in your hands, and its ease of operation.

"Three of the four implements on the table picked by all of you, except the one selected by Mr. Riley, were of my design. The fourth implement selected was the OXO Good Grips Pro Swivel Potato Peeler, which may have gotten more votes if we had potatoes here to peel. (laughter)

"One of my self-designed products, the Maxpower Planet Dog Frizbee, was not selected by anyone in the audience, even though it has sold well this past year. But again, we have no place to throw it in here, and no dog to catch it. (more laughter)

"Mr. Riley and I both had on our list the Estwing 16 oz E3-16S Hammer, which is the top-rated claw hammer by every reviewer in the country. From what I’ve read, it’s the best-balanced, affords the firmest grip, and has a claw that’s tight and can pull through most debris.

My dad got me one for my birthday two years ago, and I haven’t used any other since.

When Ashbourne was appointed to lead the Stanford team on the PURA project, his first choice of a designer was Sigma Medolf, who was delighted to be chosen, especially after hearing that the product to be designed was intended for use by nearly every human on the planet.

Ashbourne realized that it was highly unlikely that this objective would ever be fulfilled, but the project provided enough impact for anyone with an ego of any kind to participate in it. The $10,000 prize money, when divided up, wasn’t of much of an incentive, but the publicity alone could launch a career.

With Sigma on board, the Stanford team was complete and had eleven months to create their prototype of the PURA.

My feeling is that the PURA prototype should be as simple as possible, small enough to be transported or shipped, but large enough to expand to accommodate whatever is inside without requiring a change of its exterior dimensions, said Sigma when the group first met in the Lanthtop Library, located just a short walk from Stanford’s Oval and its Main Quad.

Sigma continued to think aloud as he panned the faces of the engineers, students, and the scholars that surrounded him in the nearly empty office on the ground floor of the building.

Although one model may never totally satisfy every specific or individual need, Sigma continued, the essential goal of the project seems to be to make it appear unified, as if every PURA appears to be identical to every other, even if only half of the space inside it is empty.

The proposal requires much more than that, said Steve Shnuke, the head of the mechanical group.

We all know what it’s supposed to do, but I do believe we all know that what is requested is impossible at this time, answered Sigma.

"What they want is a prototype — not a completed package ready to ship off.

We know from experience that technology is growing exponentially, while each person’s ability to use every function of everything isn’t growing at the same pace as our ability to create uses. I believe it should be our goal to address the broader scope of the proposal by envisioning an assistant that can satisfy the basic needs and perform the necessary tasks required to fit the requirements, and not be distracted by a far-reaching objective.

Ashbourne’s offer to Sigma to have him guide the PURA design concept was thrilling to the young man, though he restrained his glee in his acceptance of the offer. After his meeting with Ashbourne he had gone out for a bite to eat, and returned to his small apartment hoping for inspiration when he glanced at his computer screen and saw an ad for a set of Freeform Hardside Expandable Luggage with Spinner Wheels on the Amazon page before him.

He investigated further and found that these durable containers manufactured of polycarbonate for air transport were manufactured by Samsonite, a company founded in 1910 and started by a Colorado-born luggage salesman named Jesse Shwayder.

Sigma examined the Freeform in the advertisement and immediately realized its potential as the starting point for the program of which he had just become a member. He saw how easily it could be fitted with vision sensors in the front and rear panels as well as microphones and speakers embedded into the grooves molded into the factory design of the product.

Sigma then researched the web for comparable products and found multiple luggage companies that offered SMART suitcases, navigable by voice, sensor and text commands. All of these cases were limited in their operations, and none could perform tasks except for transporting luggage.

He then looked up personal assistance robots, and discovered that they were all modeled after humans, both in size and proportions, with some having wheels instead of legs, and others designed to appear relatable, which he saw as an unnecessary and perhaps troublesome component of a technology to be used by humans but not to function like them.

If and when PURA were to be adopted by industry, Sigma understood that it would not always be in use, but would be required to be durable, inconspicuous and storable and not necessarily as a companion or a seat holder.

Samsonite and manufacturers of SMART luggage both currently used durable and lightweight polycarbonate for their casings, a material that’s not as strong as carbon filament, but could be replaced by it in the future.

What Sigma found interesting and what attracted him immediately to the Samsonite product was its existing design that could be utilized with few changes to create his vision of a PURA that would satisfy most all of the considerations outlined in the proposal.

Due to these factors, Sigma saw no reason to get ahead of himself and search for an alternative, when a durable and suitable casing was available for $250 and available in numerous colors.

Sigma never informed the team that he was considering the use of Samsonite luggage in his concept, and never provided a rendered image of the case. He instead presented computer-generated drawings that included a custom telescoping handle and modified wheels for transport.

A month later, when the case was presented to the team, a few of its members thought the design looked familiar, but never questioned Sigma’s aesthetic choices as they marveled at the clean lines of the supposedly custom-designed case. Sigma also provided a brief description of the appendages, tools and the power sources essential to address the proposal’s challenges.

After winning the PURA competition, the prototype developed by the team at Stanford was awarded a $20 million Challenge XPrize for Innovation.

The spokesman for the Stanford team, Professor Wiley Hudson, accepted the award at a ceremony held at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center in New York City. After being handed the trophy, Professor Hudson praised his team and the XPrize awards committee for their vision.

"Thank you.... every one of you... who contributed to this project in so many ways.

"Although we’ve learned a great deal about humans over the past 50 years, we have not been able to effectively control anxiety, depression, and despair experienced by children born from a lineage of worriers and defeatists. As parents, teachers, and guardians, we have thus far been ineffectual in guiding our descendants away from our many weaknesses inherited over the generations. Instead, humans continue to repeat the cycles of negativity in the same way that they have failed to conquer diseases latent in them over the generations.

"What we’ve learned from our work with PURA is that traits in humans can be altered naturally... without drugs, counseling or gene manipulation... failing to address the factors that have prevented our species to evolve and reach its full potential by better using the technologies we’ve created to improve ourselves and change the way we interact with others on the planet.

"Since the dawn of human time, leaders of cultures have procured other humans to do their work. These slaves, servants, serfs or lower caste employees have usually been less aggressive or assertive then those who have dominated lives and relegated other humans to menial, dangerous or monotonous jobs for which they were, at best, poorly compensated. As far as we know, no culture ever existed in which everyone had a servant or a slave.

"The PURA concept, conceived by members of the National Science Foundation invited Stanford and other technology-oriented universities to participate in an experiment that could have far-reaching possibilities for humanity. Our team at Stanford set upon the challenge of creating a Personal Use Robotic Assistant available to everyone on the planet.

"It was only after we began to pair an early prototype of PURA with a host that we discovered a benefit that we now believe may exceed all other outcomes we could have imagined from the relationship.

"Like the NSF, we had assumed that the robots might prove to be helpful in assisting with tasks of the hosts, but we never expected that the pairing would alter the predispositions of humans. As we continued to expand our test group and observed and assessed the responses of our human hosts, we unexpectedly found a reduction in nearly all of their negative patterns of behavior, including anxiety, anger and depression.

"It’s too soon to assess the long-term effects of the PURA pairings, but as we’ve learned from observing island cultures, as well as those countries that have endured extended or frequent periods of war, we began to anticipate possible changes in the attitude and mindfulness of the offspring of our test group, which is as yet impossible. We were, however able to examine the genes of humans in the group.

"We found when examining the DNA of the group’s sperm and eggs, that hosts genetically disposed to elevated levels of anxiety, fear and anger had those levels lowered by their pairing with PURA. This indicated that it may be possible for negative genetic tendencies in humans to be modified in one generation, and could perhaps be eliminated in all future generations if other environmental conditions remain constant.

We know not yet just how these modifications can be passed on through any genetic line, but it’s well worth considering the possible impact that human/robotic pairings may have in improving human interactions in the future.

Professor Hudson concluded his comments with great enthusiasm. Imagine if, without requiring intercessions other than just having a robotic partner, a time may come when humans could be less aggressive and seek peace rather than war, and cooperation rather than power, greed or the exploitation of other humans.

Hudson’s ending was followed by silence rather than applause. It took about 30 seconds for a single arm to be raised by a young woman in the audience, to whom the professor pointed. She looked around at all of the people present and asked, "Are you saying that you believe it might be of necessity for humans to be paired with robots of your design forever to evolve?"

The professor thought for a moment and then, rubbing his beard, answered, "I’m not sure it has to be the same design or have the same functionality as PURA, or if it even needs to be a robot. Maybe a dog would work as well, but I don’t believe any has so far. (a smattering of laughter)

"We’ve only completed a dozen trials, and no other testing results on similar projects have been made available. All I can say is that what we’ve discovered may have a significant impact on the Earth as well as on the human species. What that impact is, we just can’t know.

What we do know is that the The XPrize will help us expand our testing, allow us to upgrade the capabilities of PURA, and provide us all a hope that sometime in the future, peaceful collaborations may be possible, not because it’s expected, but because if it exists once, it may be preferable, possible and desirable.

Polymath

Chapter Two

Sigma Medolf was anything but a conventional learner. Until he reached the age of 12 he was a good student who could remember poems, vocabulary words and stories easily, and he earned good grades in arithmetic, English and social studies.

Once he entered middle school, Sigma began to disconnect from his teachers and the other students in his class because they seemed to understand the processes of learning better than he did. Although he studied and tried to remember the names of world cities and to comprehend grammar rules and sentence structuring, he would consistently make errors and blank out when asked a question, both in his classes and on his written tests.

In 7th grade, Sigma had been placed in an advanced alternative program that introduced the new math concept. Sigma started out on the wrong foot with his teacher when he couldn’t understand the principle of a negative number being multiplied by another negative number to produce a positive number. He questioned the teacher and told her that he was unable to get past the use of the equation to comprehend the real-world application of borrowing money. To him, borrowing money put a person in debt, or a negative amount. Borrowing more money (negative money) didn’t make you less poor than you were when you started. The only way you could break even was by paying the money back, otherwise one was twice as poor as he or she was at the beginning.

The teacher used the formula to demonstrate the application of a positive change in temperature from one below freezing to a temperature above freezing, and Sigma left the meeting with a somewhat better understanding of the application so that he could pass the class, but his problems in middle school continued to be troublesome.

Sigma had lost the ability to remember the vocabulary words he’d studied when the time came for him to recall them for a test, and he had trouble remembering names and places he’d read about in books. He also found it difficult to remember formulas, equations, and the rules of sentence structure... or how to apply them.

Despite his mediocre grades, his teachers saw promise in him since he seemed to have a natural spark and could explain his thoughts clearly and succinctly when speaking one-on-one. But they sincerely believed that he was a lazy learner, since his grades continued to slide from one marking period to the next.

Before entering his senior year he vowed to quit studying altogether. He determined that for him studying was a waste of time and counterproductive. So he listened in his classes, and learned what facts he could, and when it came time to take a test, he surprisingly remembered more than he thought was possible.

Since Sigma was a promising child, his parents invested conservatively to send their son to college. They believed that, although he was different from other children they knew, he was gifted, and were shocked when they learned he was doing poorly in his classes, since he