#3.4 The Future of Technology is Alarmingly Human

Do you think technology controls you? Many would answer with a defiant "No!", however when taking a deeper look at our interaction with technology and the abilities these give us to communicate in new and innovative ways, your answer may become less decisive. As technology develops and access increases there becomes a surge in demand for new and innovative measures to develop methodologies and services that work to make life easier through the aid of technology. This opens up the opportunity for companies to take advantage of the demand by creating new forms of communicative channels that are mediated heavily by things such as artificial intelligence and "smart devices". Whilst this focus on artificial intelligence endures, a high level of risk is run in terms of how the technology develops and begins to be self-managing and learning. One such example of this going wrong is the recent interaction two Facebook robots had with each other. In this case, researchers watched as two robots who had been designed to bater and negotiate value of items quickly leading to, " divergence from human language as the agents developed their own language for negotiating" (Field, 2017). This story quickly went viral with many fearing it was the beginning of the end for humans as it evoked flashbacks to the 2004, neo-noir dystopian science fiction/action film I, Robot (Proyas et al., 2017).

Whilst these frankly mildly terrifying advancements of artificial intelligence continue to gain ground, there too are slightly less dystopian, end of the world as we know it-esque progressions being made in the field of virtual reality. These advancements are working to entirely re-imagine the interactions humans have with technology and the world around them, rewiring the brain to respond to stimuli and environments that are entirely fictional. Seeing in order to believe is now malleable as sensory data becomes more and more responsive to faux stimuli as the brain works to override it's pre-existing sense of perception and re-write its sense of reality. This interaction between mind and machine is said by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson in their book, Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution to have, "radical applications for the future of human life and society" (Blascovich, and Bailenson, 2011, Abstract).

REFERENCES:

Field, M. (2017). Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/01/facebook-shuts-robots-invent-language/ [Accessed 1 Aug. 2017].

Blascovich,, J. and Bailenson, J. (2011). Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. William Morrow & Co.

Proyas, A., Vintar, J., Goldsman, A., Smith, W., Moynahan, B. and Greenwood, B. (2017). I, Robot (2004). [online] IMD. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/ [Accessed 1 Aug. 2017].