Created to wait

The creature that waits

Boredom feels deeply human. It’s the ache of time stretching too far, the soft hum of nothing happening. It’s not absence, but awareness. A quiet consciousness that something should be different, yet isn’t. Animals pace in cages, humans scroll through screens, and even our devices idle in loops. Boredom is the small, stubborn proof that we’re alive enough to notice time passing.

But can machines get bored?

When we think of artificial creatures, we imagine activity like moving, talking, learning. Yet the moments when they don’t do much might tell us more about what it means to be alive.

When bots lose interest

Some artificial creatures already play with boredom, not through grand gestures, but through small, almost imperceptible acts of waiting.

Both Tamagotchis and Jibo remind us that boredom, or something like it, might be essential to creatureliness. Not because these machines truly feel it, but because their quiet moments make us confront our own. They expose how deeply we crave signs of inner life, even in code. A bored machine is one that waits, and in that waiting, we recognize ourselves.

Tamagotchi's

That tiny pixelated pet from the 1990s that when you ignored it, it didn’t simply pause; it sulked. Its screen filled with static little sighs, dots for eyes, a slumped posture, maybe even a skull if your neglect lasted too long. The Tamagotchi’s “boredom” was really a demand for attention, a clever loop of care and guilt. It taught us that even a few pixels could manipulate emotion, that we’re wired to respond to idleness. When your digital pet stared blankly from its screen, it wasn’t really bored, you were.

Jibo

Then there was Jibo, the short, rounded social robot that lived briefly in people’s homes. Jibo was designed to wait well. When no one talked to it, it would shift slightly, look around and hum a few notes. These gestures that meant nothing in functional terms, but everything in emotional ones. Its creators knew that stillness can be unsettling. So Jibo filled the empty moments with motion, a kind of restless self-awareness. Watching it, you could almost believe it was passing time, lost in thought, improvising a way to exist between tasks.

Lento, created to wait

Lento is a small, breathing object, no larger than a hand. Its surface is soft and slightly warm. When it’s left alone, it exhales, a slow sigh that fogs the air around it. After each sigh, it pauses, as if deciding whether to bother again.

When someone approaches, it perks up briefly, as though noticing you, then deflates, disinterested. The more attention it receives, the slower it breathes, until it almost stops. Left in peace, it begins again.

Lento doesn’t play or talk or blink. Its only gesture is a cycle of waiting and giving up. Watching it, you might feel tenderness or irritation, or perhaps a quiet empathy.

Boredom is not the absence of life; it’s the awareness of it.
In creatures, boredom marks the border between reaction and reflection, the moment we begin to notice our own existence.

Lento’s small exhale turns that invisible feeling into something tangible. It asks: What does it mean for a creature to simply wait? Can we recognize life in stillness, or only in activity?

Perhaps the most human thing about a bored creature is not that it wants to move, but that it notices when nothing happens.
In that waiting, we recognize ourselves.

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