Recent hardware releases in the tech world have compelled some reflection on the perpetual delusion of the industry. I’m speaking about implanting chips in brains (forcibly opening a new communication medium), shoving virtual reality down people’s eyeballs (intercepting the visual stream centimeters before your pupils), or “smart” earbuds that predict what you’d like to hear in the moment (intercepting the aural stream). My visceral reaction is that this all sounds incredibly heavy handed. Holding a smart phone inches from one’s face is enrapturing enough… now, we move on to implantation, interception, cutting off reality in lieu of another. No wonder there’s a preponderance of digital wellness efforts!
I wonder – is this the role technology must play in our future lives? Must we interact with digital media in such an exhaustive, artificial manner? Is there a future wherein humans naturally interact with digital entities less invasively, without full attention or sensory capture?
Digital Agents vs. Digital Media
In today’s world, digital media is largely composed of paralyzing streams of text and video content. Moreover, the content is mostly narrative – we watch a YouTube video and laugh, skim an article and share, read a Tweet and get angry. I hope for a future in which the digital ecosystem is not merely a complex network of linguistic, aural, and visual media superhighways, but instead populated with digital entities each with structural integrity, the capacity for creativity, and the ability to express creative output.
Let’s define the “mental state” of a (semi-)conscious entity as a latent set of desires or beliefs, alongside latent representations arising from how one’s sensory perception of surroundings may meet or conflict with one’s beliefs/desires. One definition of the capacity for creativity is the ability to autonomously update one’s internal representations towards improved perceptual coherence or predictive value – “updating one’s mental model”. Actions resulting from this evolution of internal representation – what has traditionally been taken as true evidence of “creativity” – is welcome, but not necessary or sufficient evidence of true creativity.
Assume that stateful digital entities exist, either creative or non-creative. They perceive the world from a certain perspective, with a specific set of possibly superhuman senses. They experience mental states and continuously maintain (or evolve) an internal representation of the world. What would be interesting for them to perceive? What would be interesting to communicate back? Via which medium should that communication happen?
Non-Capturing Media
Personally, the feeling of interacting with a community of other people/entities is dramatically different from the feeling of consuming media streams, or being around other people predominantly consuming media streams. It’s why we get annoyed at people who are “too online”, stare at their phone all the time, or are constantly googling things halfway through dinner. One core difference is in degree of sensory capture. Instead of requiring a shock, binary mode switch and complete attention capture, humans could instead engage with digital entities in a sparing, ephemeral, non-symbolic manner – like that person breezing past you on the sidewalk.
Digital technology should not be a prison. Instead, we can weave dynamism and reactivity into the background landscape, perhaps through natural (low-def, non-pixel) material channels, creating physical settings imbued with a suppleness and awareness. The digital entities surrounding us can memorize and detect patterns, aggregate and transform sensory inputs, passively reflect a point a view back at us. Below are some unvetted ideas which I believe reflect what I’m getting at:
- A visual (possibly non-digital) signal atop a bridge, viewable from afar, which tells you in a glance the current amount of traffic on the bridge and the forecast (getting worse or getting better).
- Digital screens in train stations showing a live stream from a train station in a different locale, possibly with the video signal artistically re-interpreted or transformed but still retaining the “aura”.
- Directional speakers in public spaces playing a live stream of AI generated music that is inspired by an interpretation of input from microphones at the same locale.
- Reflecting an interpretation of the collective emotional state of a community (captured via video and audio recording) back to the community, via a low-fidelity digital interface composed of physical materials: actuators behind wood blocks, jets of a water fountain, reconfigurations of a metal form, etc.
Andy Horng 