USC's Thomas has several research projects in the works, including one exploring Aibo's potential therapeutic effects on pediatric cancer patients. I watch the kids play with it, and it's beautiful. The parents almost uniformly think it's weird, and they worry that their children will confuse robots with living dogs. But children instinctively know it's a robot dog, and they start testing its limitations. You can't help it, even though you know Sony's just tweaking with you.
Some hackers tweak back.
But Aibo hackers display a level of sensitivity generally absent from their attitude toward other technologies. And it was. It was the stripping away of the illusion.