This won’t be George Washington’s Christmas at the White House.
For Christmas 2014, the first family’s holiday display will include 3-D printed ornaments, “crowd-sourced” Christmas lighting, and new and improved robotic White House dogs, according to the Washington Post.
It’s both a nod to the times and to President Obama’s “Maker Movement”: a push to support high-tech designers and builders.
Earlier in the year, the White House held a competition for “makers” to design 3-D printed ornaments for the White House collection. Five of the winners will be on display in the East Wing.
The 56 Christmas trees of the U.S. states and territories will be lit according to patterns designed by young female coders.
And the “Sunny-bot,” the robot interpretation of the first family’s Portuguese Water Dog, will rear its motion-sensor-sensitive head at visitors. Eventually, the robot team plans to have more advanced Bo and Sunny bots that can jump and move around.
For now, they’re just hoping to improve on last year’s Bo-bot, which started smoking when a ribbon accidentally landed in its motor. The perils of technology!
We’re still awaiting the official White House Christmas 2014 theme: that will be announced December 3rd.
