Word: robotized
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...Nakamura owns more than 100 of the robots, which he carefully displays in a glass case at his parents' Los Angeles home. When Internet auction fever hit last year, the prices of the rarest robots - the $500-range machines intact in original box and Styrofoam - quadrupled, so Nakamura took a deep breath and hopped on a plane to Japan to hunt out the best deals. "It was the first time I'd traveled somewhere just to fulfill my toy fetish," he says of his trips down narrow Tokyo alleyways to check out tiny toy-shops. "But Japan is a mecca...
Nakamura is so enamored of the colorful chunks of metal that in 1994 he named his magazine after the mightiest of them all, Giant Robot. The hip 'zine delves into Asian-American culture and spots the latest trends from across the Pacific - from wasabi-flavored potato chips to schoolgirl porn. Today's toy robots, says Nakamura dismissively, tend to be cobbled together with cheap plastic. Die-cast robots, on the other hand, are emblematic of the kind of Japanese craftsmanship that transformed the nation's image from shoddy imitator in the 1960s to technological leader just a decade later...
...most avid die-cast robot aficionados have put videos of their collections on the Internet: overblown prose describes each robot in joint-by-joint detail. Nakamura scoffs at videotaping, but he admits to owning a few photos of his favorites. And from time to time, he writes about his robots in his magazine. Not because the readers may care, but because it's his magazine and he can do whatever he wants. That's the power of being the ultimate Giant Robot...
...what his pet is going to do. This afternoon Gibson is sulking. While a posse of happily inebriated customers crowd around, he refuses to play ball. "He can be moody," sighs Calkins, petting Gibson's silver-plated head. "But I suppose that's my own fault for spoiling a robot...
Calkins is one of 5,000 Americans who have shelled out $2,750 for a special edition Sony Aibo robot dog, which makes you understand a little better why he ends his e-mails with the tag line: "Silicon shall replace carbon. The revolution will be automated." When he was a kid, Calkins owned a German shepherd, but that was before he discovered computers. Now he works at an Internet firm, dotes on his pet robot and in his spare time serves as president of the Robotics Society of America...