These strange tales reveal that our view of, and interaction with, technology is subtly changing. We are putting trust into our fellow devices, and taking them with us wherever we go. But until now, that relationship has been adequatly, and un- qutely, described by industrial designers as Human - machine interaction. Alive to Dead interaction. That view may come to change in the future.
A recent apple patent shows how the device could learn to find out who you are by your touch. As you picked it up it would, from mere touch, recognise you, and change it's setting to suit you. Future iPads are also rumored to feature a camera, and voice recognition.
This would be a device that feel your touch, that would recognize you by sight; that would in a sense know you. Think of all you can do with such a device. It could ask you about things, and you could answer. You could give it a squeze or shake it, and it would play some music for you. It would infact, interact with you. This would not exactly be alive to alive interaction. But it is at least two way interaction.
Pulling back a bit, and italian news paper once interviewed Daniel Dennett about the nature of consciousness. The mechanistic view, inherited by Decart, is continued by Dennett, and extended in his philosophical viewpoint to also describe our mental contents, or as this news paper put it; a soul.
It's headline, (translated from italian), was: Yes, we have a soul, but its made of many tiny robots.
Is man nothing more than a machine? Many would say yes. And I would have to agree. But this only diminishes the wonder of life to the extent that we wish it to. And it is clear that the computers of today bears little semblence to the the creative power- house that our brain is. But much of that power, we are already being able to fake.
The turing test is passed, when a man communicating with a machine will not be able to guess wether it is a machine or a person it is communicating with. This is an extremely difficult illusion to master for a machine. But we are getting closer. For those of you wondering how the developement is going in this department, I suggest you chat a bit with the robot; Alice.
The interesting question in this regard is; If we manage to make that illusion true, is it then an illusion; or have we in fact created an intelligent robot?
That was a digression. But if you have a very limited topic, such an illusion is easyer to maintain. We can all call our phone company, and be guided through menues by a machine. Even if the topic is limited, the communications serves its limited purpose. This is human - machine interaction through audio, and not text. The likely future interaction with the touchy iPad is tactile, with communication in structural morphology - or some other fancy word for touch me and I change a bit.
If your machine can see you, if it can feel you, if you can talk to it, if it adapts to you, and talks back. How are you then going to attach to it? That is the latent question in this text. If we controll and adapt the illusion if true two way interaction. How good can that illusion get. Will we eventually say: Yes, my machine has a soul; but it is made out of many tiny robots?
Earlier I have written about how the machine is a window to a social space beyond the screen. In that view the machine is a dead thing, a format, that unchangingly takes on our commands to show us an objective internet reality. But this image is now quickly changing.
The web pages we most often visit knows us. Facebook, twitter and google will go a long way to define and illuminate sides of a person, or personality. And our web- browsers know them. They save our passwords, and sync our contacts. They manage our web- tools, and maintains their functionality. And our devises sync information between each other. My mac, with my iphone, and laptop. The power of giving us information and social satisfaction is seated in two places: The providers; such as friends and family - and the active mediums; such as facebook, twitter and our machines. And to the extent that our machines actively change, and guide us through this world, they become, at the same time, our dialectic partners, and an extension of ourselves.
As a sociologist I would say; Yes, we have a social self, but it is made of our bodies and thoughts, our most used physical objects, and the opinions of our friends.
