THE TROUBLE WITH FURBYS - December 1998
by Michael Oconnor

This is going to be an interesting Christmas—the kind Paul Revere would have loved. In case you haven't heard, the Furbys are coming, the Furbys are coming. I'm not exactly sure how to conjugate this explanation, but Furbys are, or Furby is the newest high tech fad direct from the toy industry to help make our holidays a little whiter, their corporate wallets a little greener.

Until a week before Thanksgiving, I had never heard of Furby, brainchild of Tiger Electronics, the good folks who brought us beloved, but passÈ techno-marvel, the Gig-A-Pet. The Gig-A-Pet, as you may recall, was the insufferably cute digitized “pet” on a key chain made popular a couple years back by young boys and girls whose parents owned no stock in Purina Dog Chow. The trick was to use buttons near a screen to simulate “feeding” or “petting” or “playing”. If enough attention was paid to your Gig-A-Pet, he would thrive and prosper.

If you went on vacation and thoughtlessly left your Gig-A-Pet in a drawer you would return from Disney World or The Grand Canyon or Stonehenge to the same thing you could expect had you left for three weeks, forgetting to provide for your adored poodle, Scruffy. The Gig-A-Pet would be dead and the bereaved would nose-dive into an abyss of abject grief over what was now the world's most expensive key chain.

The trouble with Gig-A-Pets is their young owners became so attached that they brought them to school and focused more attention on the technology in their pocket than the math on the chalk board. Fearful of trusted Gig-A-Pet missing a meal, it began interfering with their real lives, often blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

The media reported cases where grief counselors needed to be called in to explain gig-a-death. Guilt can be a heavy burden at nine when you know you should have pressed the button instead of watching “Rugrats”.

Recently I was surfing the net at low tide, attempting to slay some rogue brain cells, when I encountered an article in Wired Magazine which drew me in. The Hasbro toy company had just acquired Tiger Electronics. The move was significant to Hasbro. They had long ago mastered the craft of creating and marketing the “action figure”, but had failed miserably in designing techno-toys of the future.

So they gobbled up Tiger which was on the verge of a marvelous breakthrough by the name of Furby. Furby is an extremely furry or hairy creature, roundishly designed in an egg-shaped kind of way. Furby reminds me of Tribbles, those cute, multiplying, hairy furballs made famous in one of the most original and celebrated Star Trek episodes, “The Trouble With Tribbles”. If you have no reference point for Tribbles, you are just the sort of Trivial Pursuit opponent I've been looking for.

But, unlike Tribbles, Furbys have faces and come in many color schemes: Gray with black spots. White with green eyes. Tan with gray beard and green eyes. Gray/brown with stripes and gray tummy. Black with white chest and blue eyes. Gray with black spots, pink belly & ears, orange feet and green eyes. These creatures come in a wide assortment of colors to convey their uniqueness and to create a need to ”collect them all”.

Furby has a rounded, beak-like mouth to suggest, but never clarify, bird heritage. He also has pointed, cat-type ears and flat feet. There is no denying Furby is cute, even if it's in an Ed Norton sort of way. But this is only the window dressing. The secret to Furby lies beneath the fur.

His soul is an engine. Or a motherboard. Or an outboard motor. But it runs. Oh, how it runs! Furby, according to Wired, will be capable of “at least 300 different unique combinations of eye, ear, and mouth movements, all generated by a set of cams driven by a single 8,000-rpm motor and controlled by two microprocessors. The toy will have attitude sensors that could tell whether it was standing or being held upside down. Light sensors would tell it when to go to sleep, a microphone would enable it to respond to sound, and pressure sensors would let it know when it was being petted. An infrared transceiver between Furby's eyes would let it interact with other members of its species.”

That last sentence is the reason there is s much joy in Hasbroville. These little guys can “talk” to each other. And to us. They can “learn” from each other. And from us. With an artificial intelligence that makes our old friend Chatty Cathy seem downright quaint, Furbys are like snowflakes—no two of them share the same personality or react to their environment in the same way.

Furby will pop out of the box speaking only in his native tongue, Furbish. But over time, Furby will gradually incorporate words of English he “hears” into his vocabulary. Furby comes equipped to play a multitude of games like Hide and Seek and Simon Says.

To help Furby “learn” you simply stroke his back. This will cause him to repeat the previous action. Furby will assume you like what he did and he will incorporate the preferred behavior into his bag of learned behaviors, none of which are forgotten, even when the batteries run out.

USA Today reports that Furby “responds to pats on the head, backstrokes, tummy tickles, feedings, and turnovers, but the responses are not predictable. Cover his eyes and he might say “No light” or “boo-a-hoo”. Be nice and he'll blow you a kiss. Ignore him and he'll comment: “Boring”. Put him in a room with another Furby and they'll chat. But if one has a cold, the other is very likely to catch it.”

Further examination of the Furbys' communal behavior shows us that if one Furby in the room is angry, another may start singing to soothe it. If Furby starts laughing hysterically, it's almost certain to be infectious, causing the entire collected colony to twitter and chortle uncontrollably. This is the kind of audience I desperately needed during my short-lived career in stand-up comedy.

OK, let's catch our breath for a moment and ask the pertinent question, “Has there ever been a toy that could “communicate” with the other toys?” Oh sure, we saw this in hit animated films like, Toy Story and Small Soldiers, which documented a well-traveled Sci-Fi theme—the revolt of the toys. We read about it decades ago in Margery Williams' classic, The Velveteen Rabbit, which, incidentally, was subtitled How Toys Become Real.

In Williams' book (avert your eyes if you don't know the story) Love makes toys real. But today, as we approach a new millennium, it is electronic technical wizardry that opens Furby's eye on the world and gives him as close to a “real” brain as any toy has enjoyed to date, this side of the movies. More specifically it is a tiny infrared beam which, when triggered independently of humans, permits Furby to communicate with the other creatures in Furbdom.

It is that last phrase, “triggered independently of humans” which stops me coveting one or more of these creatures for any one of the three kids in our home (Bonnie, Dusty, and the big kid) and sends all sorts of parental red flags waving.

Our toys are becoming as smart as we are. They aren't there yet, but the progressive pattern is unmistakable. We appear intent on creating “life”, or at least simulating it, in such a proficient manner, with such flare and panache, it begs the question, “Aren't we encroaching on God's territory?” I think we have been for a long time.

Look at a popular computer game, “Sim City”. Participants are encouraged to create a city from scratch. Let's call ours O'Connorville. Starting with a bankroll of many thousand dollars, I as the Mayor begin zoning a large bare patch of land for residential, commercial, and industrial purposes. I bulldoze brush, pave roads, hook up utilities, and await the arrival of Sims, the loyal subjects who populate beloved O'Connorville.

It becomes my job to take care of the Sims. There are homes, but no jobs. Build up the industrial section. There are jobs, but no place to buy food and other necessities. Put in malls and grocery stores. Traffic is congested; they need alternatives to reach work. Create a mass transit system. They need recreational facilities. Build parks. More Sims are drawn to O'Connorville due to the low tax structure and crime begins to occur. Build a couple police stations. Utility infrastructure becomes inadequate to meet the growing populations needs. Install a nuclear power plant.

All this cash outflow has caused a shortage in the treasury. Raise taxes. Sims become irritated at higher tax structure. Appease them with a professional sports stadium. Potholes appear in the roads and fires begin to randomly break out. Fill the holes and recruit a fire department.

After several hours of this computer simulation, you understand the complexity of your town. You feel the toll stress is taking on you. But O'Connorville has grown from a hamlet of 200 to a thriving metropolis of 250,000. As you feel the surge of power coursing through your veins you begin to feel less and less like the mayor of O'Connorville and more its Merciful Supreme Omnipotent Being.

This is how these games are designed—to give the player total control of his environment. Why? Simple economics. There is a demand for a product like this, so the entrepreneur invents it. This demand is created by our almost insatiable desire for control of our surroundings.

Though never a duffer in real life, I learned to play golf on the computer. In the course of maybe twenty hours of trial and error, I have become a good enough golfer to occasionally beat simulated professional golfers. I could spend a lifetime at Pebble Beach and St. Andrews, never coming close to achieving what I have in the game PGA Tour Golf 2. The game has afforded me control of a situation, light years beyond my natural talents.

I have ridden virtual reality roller coasters. I have skied down the slope of a virtual Swiss mountain. The highs were exhilarating. But I knew at ride's end, I would be in a theater seat. I knew after challenging the snow-packed trail I would not have to pay the price of a broken leg. My cost for the thrill was $2.50, not months of intensive training with potential injury.

But in the process, what has been lost? How about cherished values like patience and humility? I can cover a two-player 72 hole golf tournament in two hours and mock the weakness of my computer opponent in the process. There is no sportsmanship, no fellowship in simulations. Just winning and losing.

Somewhere along the way we lost a piece of our humanity in our battle for control. We've come a long way, baby, from the days where “control freak” was a derogatory term. Now it's considered a badge of honor that gets you a sweeps week slot on 60 Minutes. But eventually, even the strictest controls fall short. Reality intrudes. Death comes calling on us or someone we love. And we are forced to admit an unbearable truth.

There is no control outside of God.

First and last, there is God, Father of all, Creator of our universe. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end. Everything else is organized chaos.

We want to be the football coach, calling successful plays from the sidelines. But passes get dropped, balls are fumbled, and coaches get fired. We want to be the President. But the President has Congress, and sometimes his wife, to keep him in line. We want to be the richest, most powerful CEO in industry. But the Department of Justice is always just an anti-trust lawsuit away.

So, let's be honest, what we really want to be is . . . God. No one is more powerful. No one messes with God and gets away with it. It's the ultimate position of power with a built in state-of-the-art celestial control panel. When you're God, you don't need power lunches. But playing God is a tricky business, though we have done it for centuries.

And now it's come to this: sheep are cloned and humans will follow; conception takes place outside the womb and one day won't even require a daddy; gender and eye color will soon be selected in the children we decide to keep. From there it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to seeing a doctor take a human life before a national television audience. Whether or not we should do these things is rarely the question.

We can.

When we set in motion and support the idea that we can have control over things we were never intended to control, then we are playing God. We, then, become idolaters, worshipping at the altar of control, in awe of our own cleverness and self-absorption.

The trouble with Tribbles was that they kept multiplying, maddeningly out of control. The trouble with Furby and his $30 kin is that they will, no doubt, do the same. But maybe some parents somewhere, will look beyond the marvel of Furby this Christmas and remember a true miracle which occurred nearly 2,000 years ago. Perhaps those parents will head down to the local pet store and buy a hamster to place under their children's Christmas tree. It will be small, cute, furry, and—oh, yes . . . a little messy. Some things were always intended to be beyond our control.

©Copyright 1998 Improbable People Ministries

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