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Authors: Patrick Kingsley
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students learn regardless of what field they’re in,” says Wetton. “Working with people, the way it is you ask questions, the way it is you glean knowledge from the situation we’re designing for.”
Sometimes this process takes the form of “body-storming” – like a brainstorm, but using physical rather than mental experiences to stimulate ideas. Recently, robotics researchers at the University of Southern Denmark asked agroup of Kolding students to design the interface for a robot that could be used to take blood samples in Danish hospitals instead of human nurses. As part of the project’s body-storm phase, every single student had to learn to take blood from real patients. “We had to understand that fear of having blood taken, to understand the process of it.” What they soon realised was that patients would only stand for their arm being injected with a syringe by a robot if a) they couldn’t see the injection taking place; and b) the robot looked nothing like a robot. So what they came up with instead was a cosy, dolphin-shaped armrest into which a patient would slot her arm. A hidden infrared ray would then identify the right vein, an unseen syringe would pop out momentarily, prick the skin and then shoot back into the armrest, ready for testing.
Quite why such an extraordinary robot was designed in the first place – and the implications it has for Denmark’s massive welfare state – will be explored in the next chapter.
4. POOR CARINA:
the problem with the welfare state
“The welfare state we have is excellent in most ways. We only have this little problem. We can’t afford it.” – Gunnar Viby Mogensen
There is a well-known sketch by a pair of Norwegian comedians in which a Dane tries to buy a bike tyre from a hardware store. Things begin badly. The man behind the counter can’t understand his compatriot’s accent – but is too embarrassed to say so. Instead, he just takes a wild guess at what the cyclist wants and hands over a long file. Then things get worse. It turns out the cyclist can’t understand the vendor either, but is similarly too polite to admit it. So he pretends the file is what he wanted all along and asks how much it costs. The vendor tells him, but again the cyclist can’t work out what was said, so he ends up holding out a fistful of Danish kroner and allows the hardware man to pluck theappropriate amount from his hands. To round off the farce, a cunning milkman enters to ask if the store needs 1000 milk bottles. Again, the vendor can’t understand a word of the milkman’s question, says yes simply to make things easier and is landed with one of the largest domestic grocery bills ever known in Scandinavia.
The sketch’s popularity on YouTube shows how successfully it riffs on traditional Scandinavian stereotypes. The Swedes and the Norwegians think the Danes are loud, brash and unintelligible – even to each other. The Danes think the Swedes (their medieval rivals) are uptight control freaks. Both joke that the Norwegians are mere provincial bumpkins (Norway was once a colony of both Denmark and Sweden), while everyone thinks the Finns are weird. You can see a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of these hackneyed tropes in the first episode of The Bridge , when a Danish detective (played by Kim Bodnia) is paired with a Swedish one (Sofia Helin) after a dead body is found draped over the two countries’ mutual border. When a woman needs to drive through a crime scene to get to her husband’s hospital, Bodnia – the laid-back Dane – gives her the go-ahead before Helin – the pedantic Swede – slaps him down. Later, Bodnia tries to make a joke to a group of Swedish coppers. Cue: tumbleweed. Like in the Norwegian skit, no one understands him.
These stereotypes are of course just that: stereotypes. But some of them have distant roots in truth – and in the case of the Danes, it’s in the fact that their language, oncevery similar to Norwegian and Swedish, has
Sometimes this process takes the form of “body-storming” – like a brainstorm, but using physical rather than mental experiences to stimulate ideas. Recently, robotics researchers at the University of Southern Denmark asked agroup of Kolding students to design the interface for a robot that could be used to take blood samples in Danish hospitals instead of human nurses. As part of the project’s body-storm phase, every single student had to learn to take blood from real patients. “We had to understand that fear of having blood taken, to understand the process of it.” What they soon realised was that patients would only stand for their arm being injected with a syringe by a robot if a) they couldn’t see the injection taking place; and b) the robot looked nothing like a robot. So what they came up with instead was a cosy, dolphin-shaped armrest into which a patient would slot her arm. A hidden infrared ray would then identify the right vein, an unseen syringe would pop out momentarily, prick the skin and then shoot back into the armrest, ready for testing.
Quite why such an extraordinary robot was designed in the first place – and the implications it has for Denmark’s massive welfare state – will be explored in the next chapter.
4. POOR CARINA:
the problem with the welfare state
“The welfare state we have is excellent in most ways. We only have this little problem. We can’t afford it.” – Gunnar Viby Mogensen
There is a well-known sketch by a pair of Norwegian comedians in which a Dane tries to buy a bike tyre from a hardware store. Things begin badly. The man behind the counter can’t understand his compatriot’s accent – but is too embarrassed to say so. Instead, he just takes a wild guess at what the cyclist wants and hands over a long file. Then things get worse. It turns out the cyclist can’t understand the vendor either, but is similarly too polite to admit it. So he pretends the file is what he wanted all along and asks how much it costs. The vendor tells him, but again the cyclist can’t work out what was said, so he ends up holding out a fistful of Danish kroner and allows the hardware man to pluck theappropriate amount from his hands. To round off the farce, a cunning milkman enters to ask if the store needs 1000 milk bottles. Again, the vendor can’t understand a word of the milkman’s question, says yes simply to make things easier and is landed with one of the largest domestic grocery bills ever known in Scandinavia.
The sketch’s popularity on YouTube shows how successfully it riffs on traditional Scandinavian stereotypes. The Swedes and the Norwegians think the Danes are loud, brash and unintelligible – even to each other. The Danes think the Swedes (their medieval rivals) are uptight control freaks. Both joke that the Norwegians are mere provincial bumpkins (Norway was once a colony of both Denmark and Sweden), while everyone thinks the Finns are weird. You can see a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of these hackneyed tropes in the first episode of The Bridge , when a Danish detective (played by Kim Bodnia) is paired with a Swedish one (Sofia Helin) after a dead body is found draped over the two countries’ mutual border. When a woman needs to drive through a crime scene to get to her husband’s hospital, Bodnia – the laid-back Dane – gives her the go-ahead before Helin – the pedantic Swede – slaps him down. Later, Bodnia tries to make a joke to a group of Swedish coppers. Cue: tumbleweed. Like in the Norwegian skit, no one understands him.
These stereotypes are of course just that: stereotypes. But some of them have distant roots in truth – and in the case of the Danes, it’s in the fact that their language, oncevery similar to Norwegian and Swedish, has
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