Poly-Technological: On the Multiple Identities of Man

We become a homo technologicus, which is a distinct human being that uses technologies, but a poly-technologicus - a person who splits himself into many discrete entities through technology

This time, let's start with the game. What do the following numbers tell you?

247,294 - 10,303 - 28

78,078 - 3,253 - 8.9

35,206 - 1,466 - 4

In the first row we see the number of hours the average person sleeps throughout his life, and immediately after that the total number of days, and the number of years he loses just because The annoying need for sleep. Out of all the days of your life, you spend 28 years in unproductive snoring.

In the second row, we are exposed to the number of hours that an average person watches TV in his entire life. And again - the number of days and years we lose. Throughout our lives we lose almost nine years to the graceful tusk of Marina and Bucky.

Last but not least, for our entire life we ​​lose 4 years lifting the fork to our mouth, opening the mouth, monotonously chewing and swallowing. In other words, in eating and drinking.

These data are not intended to convince you to stop sleeping, eating or watching TV - most of them are essential needs. They only reveal a simple truth: we lose a great deal of time in leisure activities designed to take care of our basic needs.

I recently participated inHTIA2012 conference panel, which will deal with homo technologikos - the technological man of the future. I have no doubt that we will all be talking about the various ways in which technologies will improve human abilities, and some of them will surely also refer to the data I brought. We live, after all, in a society that worships efficiency. Homo technologicus, therefore, may well be proud of interfaces that affect his brain and help him sleep less but get more done, or food pills that will satisfy all his needs, but require exactly one second to swallow.

This is all well and good, but I want to suggest a different direction: not homo technologicus, which is a clear human being that uses technologies, but poly-technologicus - a person who splits himself into many discrete entities through technology.

polytechnological

The move towards poly-technological has been going on for some time. The automatic answering machine in my office, or the automatic reply in my email that says "I'm on vacation" and adds a random joke from a pool of several hundred, are existing technologies that demonstrate a small part of the potential. They don't impersonate me, that's clear, but they perform a basic and simple action in my place. Just as I can choose to move a finger or a hand, so can I program them to respond differently. In fact, they replace a part of me. If not for them, I would have to sit in front of the computer or the phone all day and all night to perform the same action.

A slightly more advanced version of polytechnologicals can be found in network cheats. The scammer sends email messages to tens of thousands of people with one click of a button. These actually constitute tens of thousands of fragments of himself. They are very limited - they only place a certain bait in front of the potential victim, but even that is for a good reason. Each of them tells the reader the same story: a Nigerian prince who has fallen from greatness and needs temporary financial assistance. Only complete fools would answer such an email... fThis is how the fraudster automatically selects the gullible from the entire population. The scammer actually multiplied himself ten-thousand times with one click of a button.

You don't have to be a scammer, or send spam, to make your tech IDs work for you. Today you no longer need to be a computer wizard to become a polytechnologist. There are bots designed for the regular user and capable of creating an upgraded identity for him. Take for example the website rep.licants.org. I entered the website and was exposed to a tempting offer: they are ready to create a bot for me - an algorithm that will take control of my Facebook and Twitter account. I'm supposed to enter it with information about myself: age, location, interests. He, for his part, will analyze everything I've already posted on social networks, understand my interests, and start posting new status messages accordingly under my name, at any hour, at any time.

Rep.licants promise that they can turn even an introverted and withdrawn user into the virtual party nail. And as they say - "The bot can be seen as a virtual prosthesis that is added to the user's account..." Basically, they emphasize a certain element in the user's identity, which can continue to operate even while the general identity is busy watching TV and sleeping.

Me, and more me, and more me

The Facebook bot helps mainly with friends, but what if I need help at work? Just yesterday I sat in front of the computer, and tried to deal with three different people who asked me to come and lecture to their companies... and asked which lectures might suit them. For each of them I spent about ten minutes in a quick search in the database of lectures on the future, and formulating a suitable proposal. That's 30 minutes I could have spent playing with my child, doing productive work, or preparing food for my wife. Why couldn't I? Because I'm just one person!

Ah.

MyCyberTwin may solve this problem. It allows users to create virtual doubles of themselves By filling out a questionnaire with 30 personal questions that finds out exactly how extroverted, introverted, shy, funny, etc. you are. You also enter information about your work, resume and so on. And from then on the bot can answer most of the questions it is asked in your place. According to John Zackus (who was interviewed for an article in New Scientist on the subject), "One cyber-twin can talk to millions of people at the same time." Admittedly - this twin is a bit limited in his abilities - but another vision for the time, and artificial intelligence only continues to be perfected.

How will humans react to talking to a virtual double? How will patients feel who talk to a virtual doctor, or pilots who consult a virtual air traffic controller? Some will feel uncomfortable. Others may actually like the idea. It turns out, for example, thatSeventy percent of people prefer to speak with pre-programmed nurses, instead of with real nurses or doctors. As one of the patients explained - "I prefer Louise [the virtual nurse, R.C.], she is better than a doctor, she explains more, and doctors are always in a hurry... she tells me more than my doctor."

Will we start to see doctors transferring their knowledge to a bot in the future? This can be a good way for private doctors to filter their patient population. The initial screening will be carried out using a virtual double of the doctor, with whom the patient can talk in depth. If the symptoms are relatively clear, the double will diagnose the disease accordingly and offer treatment. If the symptoms are less clear, or more interesting, he will transfer the treatment to the real doctor.

The future of man - in the computer?

The well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil assures us that by the middle of the century we will already have artificial intelligence that can imitate human thought processes. Ten years later it will also be able to fit in a laptop.

Given the advanced technology that Kurzweil predicts, the future ahead may be one in which polytechnological will reach its peak. Every person will be able to deposit a virtual copy of their brain on a computer. His double, completely identical to him, will post messages for him on Twitter, write books for him and chat with his friends on Facebook - or at least with their computerized identities. People will stop doing anything they don't want to do. The black and monotonous jobs - at least at the computer level - will be left to our virtual doubles.

This is still a distant vision, but we are slowly getting closer to it. More and more companies Replace the human customer service representatives of which are virtual entities. The bots are becoming more and more sophisticated, and are able to respond to a wide variety of situations and questions, to the extent that they fool even experts in the field. Psychologist Robert Epstein, for example, recently flirted via email with a nice girl named Ivana. Only after two months of correspondence back and forth, he began to suspect the bitter truth: Ivana was a bot. "I should have known better…" Wrote. And he is right. After all, he had previously overseen a competition where bots competed by pretending to be human. "You see, I'm supposed to be an expert in bots."

Today it is easy for us to identify the bots in chat rooms, customer service and even on Facebook. In a few years we will lose this ability. And in a few decades, there will be no point in trying at all. Our virtual beings will be wise (or stupid) just like us. Talking to them will be equivalent to talking to a real person.

The day of the polytechnologist

We have always thought of homo technologicos as a simple upgrade of man: a calculator stuck here, a robotic hand attached there. But technological changes - even those that seem very simple to us - can lead to far-reaching applications in society and in the way of human thinking. The humans of today are not similar to the humans who were 10,000 years ago, before the invention of writing. The humans of the next century will look at their grandparents with amused eyes, and will not understand why they insist on writing books themselves, or talking to each other, and not letting the double identities on the computer do it. They, the full poly-technologicos, will treat us as homo-technologicos.

Or in other words, antiques.

Chat with Sarah, the virtual friend