Talinz: Growing up in the future

Although they are a highly advanced technology, to many, Talinz units are now just a fixture of everyday life, rather than something to be excited about. In this respect, a generational gap is coming into being. The oldest generation still living saw the Talinz as weapons of war in their youth, their children have grown to adulthood after the treaty, and seen their induction into the workforce. In turn, their children, the youngest generation, are now used to the sight of a unit on the street doing groceries, chaperoning a child to school, or even teaching them in class. Their experience with the units in their formative years will often greatly affect their politics and perceptions of them.

Current teenagers and young adults have never known a life where Talinz have not been an integral part of society. There is certainly an age skew towards younger participants where involvement in Talinz rights and the Talinz liberation movement is concerned. Some put this down to the typically more ‘revolutionary’ stance of younger generations, and expect that many will grow out of it. Others claim this is a growing movement from individuals that understand the significance of the technology on a culturally deeper level than those before them.

Almost all Young people have been in extensive contact with at least one Talinz unit at some point in their life. Although not every family can afford one, many school curriculums include some form of education about the creation and maintenance of Talinz units as standard. More remote schools often utilise Talinz teachers, allowing teachers to be in multiple classrooms at once through piloting technology. After-school robotics clubs are common and Talinz fighting leagues between schools have become remarkably popular of late. When a child comes home from school, they will be bombarded with advertisements featuring their favourite Talinz fighters, dramas featuring Talinz as plot points, sport with Talinz competitors, and the news reporting recent demonstrations and political strife caused by the ubiquity of these robots. Whilst their parent’s generation may work with Talinz units every day, they are not as integrated or immersed with the culture as their children, and know a world without it.  

There are a number of other, more subtle influences that perhaps even the Talinz generation are not aware of. The Centre for Humanity, an international anti-Talinz think-tank and political pressure group, recently published startling survey figures suggesting that many of the youth of the Talinz generation could not cook, clean or operate basic electrical appliances. These individuals, the study claimed, had grown up with Talinz house assistance, and had never seen any need to learn how to perform basic household chores. There is an assumption among these individuals, the think-tank suggests, that they will always have a Talinz unit to work for them that, they conclude, leads to unhealthy levels of dependency. They have been quizzed on their sampling techniques for this survey since, but many will agree that it potentially raises a valid point.

These pressure groups often suggest that the overwhelming presence of Talinz units in the lives of the youth of today has normalised them to their existence, and clouded their judgement of what is real and what is not. Most consider Talinz to be tools, and stress that forming friendships with such beings is bizarre and unnatural, just as one does not become friends with a car, or a toaster. Whilst some groups argue for a continuation of the status quo, some anti-Talinz groups argue that the robots should be decommissioned completely, their jobs redistributed to “honest human workers”.

Recent developments in designing Talinz units to be perfectly compatible with their owners have raised a number of concerns from more conservative groups, also. Many anti-Talinz pressure groups suggest that the youth could be lead astray by the prospect of building a romantic partner, falling into a ‘fake’ love with a being created to care about them. Some have claimed this is the beginning of the moral decay of society as we know it. Most Talinz rights groups consider this argument to be a straw man, however. The practise is uncommon, and Talinz-human romantic relationships are considered to be the purview of a marginalised niche and are derided even within Talinz rights circles. In more liberal groups, this opinion tends to change based on whether the Talinz unit was created for the purpose of becoming a partner to the human, or whether the relationship evolved naturally, with the latter understandably being considered less taboo.