Our discussions on immediacy in class reminded me of the Uncanny Valley Theory. I'll summarize it for those of you who don't want to read the lengthy wikipedia entry. The Uncanny Valley is a theory that a Japanese roboticist came up with to explain emotional responses between humans towards robots. Basically, the theory says that as a robot (or any depiction of a human) becomes more humanlike in appearance and motion then the human response towards it will become more positive, until a point is reached where the robot suddenly becomes repulsive to the human - this is the "valley" in the name, where the levels of empathy dip suddenly.