'iDiot' addicted robots reflect our smart phone obsession?

Barcelona-based visual effects/3D animation company Big Lazy Robot brings us a beautiful animated video that uses an alternate robotic world to satirize our dependence on technology.

Biz Lazy Robot writes on its website: “Yes, our happiness is based on things we don’t need and governed by entities we don’t control, so what?” The short spec-film makes its point using iPhone-inspired devices, cleverly named iDiots.

The short opens and closes with the same shot, a set of robot feet waiting in line for the newest version of the iDiot, the alternate universe’s iPhone-like device. Between the iDiot 4 and the iDiot 5, the robots — which were based off a Japanese model and made in Pakistan — text nothings to each other like “011100010,” like kitten picture after kitten picture after kitten picture, Instagramming buildings, and most important, not actually interacting with each other.

Rather, like countless parties and dinner tables, the robots all hang out around each other, but keep their heads down in their iDiots the entire time. Like, “gee glad we all decided to be around one another to be on our phones!”

As we pointed out earlier today, our smart phones and social media stimulate distinct areas of the brain related to the feelings they induce and thought processes they require.

But Big Lazy Robot also points out that the video isn’t supposed to only be taken as a commentary on society and technology. It’s also just entertainment. “Don’t take the message too seriously,” Biz Lazy Robot wrote on its website. “This is a promo video we’ve done to laugh at ourselves. We all have an i-diot inside, and it’s so fun!”