Sex Sells
Sex has always been a taboo topic. Many advertising teams take advantage of this and use it to promote their products. According to Frank Tobe in his 2017 The Robot Report article titled “Sex Robots: Facts, Hype, and Legal and Ethical Considerations,” “The sex tech industry is estimated to be worth $30 billion based on the market value of existing technologies such as smart sex toys.” The sex toy industry used to advance sex is worth just as much as the sex industry itself. Tobe discusses the newly developed products being introduced to the market as well as the legal and ethics behind it. The article mentions several companies that are competing in the sex technology industry to build the perfect sexbots, which are dolls replicated to look like real life women. In addition, he shares a study done by the University of Duisburg-Essen which includes interesting facts of men and their sex life. To contrast the information he provided, Tobes mentioned an article by Laura Bates in the New York Times which mentions the downside to sexbots.
After reading the article, I am positive that Frank Tobe is a credible author with a detailed background in robot and mechanics. To evaluate Tobe’s credibility in speaking on this topic, I followed the “Evaluating Internet Sources” article from Georgetown University. The University’s website has a series of categories readers can use to verifies an author’s credibility. I believe the author is credible in writing about sex robots because his article responds well to the University’s page that questions the author’s information such as background, purpose of article, accuracy of information, and website links.
Noticing the Little Things
The first thing I noticed upon entering the website is the author’s name. The author’s name is a hyperlink which allows me to click on it and enter another web-page. The page included a biography that states Frank Tobe is “founder of The Robot Report and co-founder of ROBO Global” and it includes other articles that he have written for the website. By stating his experiences in the biography, it gives readers a reason to trust that the author knows what he’s talking about. Readers know that he must be an expert in robots since the website is call The Robot Report. In addition, the author also mention another experience he has with robots which is ROBO Global, a company he co-founded. With two major connections with robots, the author is already shown to be credible.
As for purpose, the article is unbiased which shows that the author just wants to inform his readers on the sex robots instead of persuading us to buy a product. By staying unbiased, it gives the author a professional feel. I noticed that the author did mention companies that are beginning to develop sex robots. By mentioning the companies, the audience can make their own decision to purchase a robot if they want. It does not feel like the author is advertising the products, instead he mentions the product in a natural way where its used to inform the audience.
Accuracy and links are important things to search for when analyzing a piece of writing. In the article I have chosen, the author provided quotes from websites that he has received his information from. For example, he did mentioned the Guardian when he said “Quoting from The Guardian article: “The AI will learn through interaction, and not just learn about you, but learn about the world in general…” To checked that this is a legitimate quote, I found the website from The Guardian and found the quote in their article titled “The Race to Build the World’s First Sex Robot.” This gives him another credibility point because he was able to successfully show his research. In addition to that, Tobes mentioned a study done by the University of Duisburg-Essen which allows him to build a more credible foundation for his article. Tobes also included another hyperlink to The New York Times opinion article titled “The Trouble With Sex Robots” in the paragraph where he talks about legal and ethical consideration. He provided a hyperlink to that article where he said “strident essay in the New York Times.” By adding this link, he is further proving his research and it allows readers to know this is an unbiased article because he talked about the upbringing of sexbots as well as the downside.
It’s a Hard Yes
Although the author has shown he is credible in many category, there is one thing I would like to see from the article. The article was published in 2017. If the author could update the article, it would make his article more credible because people like to see current news. Overall, I would consider this article to be credible. The author has shown he has done his research and kept a clean and professional website. The article is free from spelling and grammar errors and has hyperlinks that lead to working websites. If the author could update his article and provided current data, then that would allow his writing to look stronger.
Work Cited
Bates, Laura. “The Trouble With Sex Robots.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/sex-robots-consent.html.
Kleeman, Jenny. “The Race to Build the World’s First Sex Robot.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Apr. 2017, www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot.
Tobe, Frank. “Sex Robots: Facts, Hype, and Legal and Ethical Considerations.” The Robot Report, 18 Sept. 2017, www.therobotreport.com/sex-robots-facts-hype-legal-ethical-considerations/.
