The effects current and future technologies could have on the attributes that make us human.

Quantified Self Movement and Hyperrealism, the effects future and current technologies could have on the attributes that make us human

By Ben Mottershead | Written 2014

?Abstract:?

While this paper was written nearly 8 years a go to this day. For me, it remains as relevant as ever as we move away from the pandemic, into the 'new normal and ever further into the world of web3, and Metaverse communities.

It proposes to outline some of the latest innovations at the time, in current and future technologies, along with the concepts of ‘Hyperrealism’ and ‘Quantified Self Movement', and further proposes where these technologies could lead us in the future. It aims to explore the attribute that makes us human and using case studies along with researched material and current practitioner opinions, along with their knowledge, it attempts to explore the effects these innovations could have on humankind. In particular how our emotional and haptic experience with the world could be affected. It further aims to show the positives and negatives of these types of technologies and suggest where they could take us and whether a continued immersion with technology could lead us to a greater level of technological adaption and progression of whether it could potentially lead us into a state of devolution that affects our identity to such an extent we begin to lose the very attributes that make us human.?

?Keywords: Interactivity, Hyperrealism, Emotion, Haptic, Futuristic

?Introduction:

‘If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs for the push-button finger’ (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1955) it's interesting how someone in the 1950s would almost predict the future. In recent years we have indeed become a global population that has become completely immersed in and surrounded by smart technology that can be operated with a single finger. However using the brainwave monitoring prototype ‘Muse’ and the concept of ‘Quantified Self Movement’ along with the Robbie Coopers ‘Alter Ego project’ and the notion of ‘Hyperrealism’, I will attempt to show where the continued immersion and development of future technologies could lead us, the effect these technologies could have on our identities and how they could potentially affect the very traits that deem us to be human.?

Being human

To understand how current and upcoming technologies are going to affect us as humans, in particular the haptic and emotional experience we are already having with technology and the world around us, we need to first address what it means to be human. Noted philosopher AC Grayling (2013) states in an interview on BBC Radio 2 “If I had to choose one thing that separates us from the rest of the world it is Culture” while on the same show Robert T. Kiyosaki is quoted saying “Emotions are what make us human. Make us real. The word 'emotion' stands for energy in motion. Be truthful about your emotions, and use your mind and emotions in your favour, not against yourself.” I find Kiyosaki’s opinion very interesting, although I would add we shouldn't go as far as to say it makes us human in the vast scheme of things, other animals are also capable of showing emotion (Dawkins, 2000, p.883) however when discussing the difference between man and machine at the current time and looking into a near future we could agree that it is emotion that contains one of the most significant differences between the two.

In the book ‘The Expression of the Emotion in Man and Animals,’ Charles Darwin theorised that human emotion has evolved expressions rather than the result of our cultural heritage (Darwin, 1872) and it is in this theory where we can begin to see the massive differences between technology and humans occurring. Technology has also evolved substantially over the last century due to exponential progress, as Danish physicist Niels Bohr (n.d) noted, “Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue.” While we could argue this is indeed the truth, the type of technological evolution we are witness too has been entirely created by mankind’s ability and need to adapt to the world around us. We find ourselves still at a point where the majority of computers and robots have been programmed to read and replicate the expression of the person in front of them rather than feel said emotions themselves. An example of this is David Hanson’s robotic faces (Fig.1) which have been designed to reproduce the facial expression you have and remember them in an attempt to create empathy within machines. When giving a demonstration of his work Hanson said,

“Machines are becoming devastatingly capable of things like killing. Those machines have no place for empathy. There are billions of dollars being spent on that. Character robotics could plant the seed for robots that have empathy.” (Hanson 2009)

????????Fig. 1 – Prototype of one of David Hanson’s first robotic faces.

From this, we could say that while humans are capable of organically creating emotion and empathy and have evolved to do just that, machines are still at the stage where they merely produce an echo or an interpretation of what it deems the emotion to be and has yet to develop any kind of recognition for what those emotions represent. An example of this would be the Furby toy (Fig.2) created in 1998 which had pre-programmed emotions within it that responded when it was interacted with. This would be a good example of a robot that gave the illusion of having humanistic qualities and being able to portray natural emotion when in fact it merely possessed false sentience.

Another area we need to address when referring to human characteristics is the five major senses we possess and our ability to use them. This is again not to say having these senses makes us human but we could argue that sense allows us to be sentient which is over an important attribute that makes us human, something which technology is currently lacking and it is our perception of the world through our senses that allow us to interact with it in the way we do.

One sense that is particularly important in today's technological world and will become the main focal point within this paper when referring to our senses is the sense of touch. It is the first sense developed in the womb and the last sense used before death (Anon, 2012) and as said by T B Brazelton “Touch functions on many levels of adaption, first to make survival possible and then to make life meaningful” (Brazelton, 1990) this is something we should all think about. The majority of us, when considering the possibilities our hands allow us to achieve and the notion of touch, would imagine the ability to open doors, carry objects, feel our way upstairs in the dark and so on. The more practical elements that are required from us in everyday life. However, we never stop to consider the meaning the sense of touch can give us in our lives. Having the ability to touch and interact with the world around us allows us to create a deeper connection and a much more personal experience with it. This is something that modern-day machines and robots have yet to achieve; while they can hold or touch something they are unable to form an emotional response to it. In an essay entitled ‘In Touch with Reality’ neurophysiologist Mark Lythgoe states,?

“..touch is more than just a mechanism by which we sense the world around us. Touch is a two-way process that provides a complex exchange between people: it establishes a relationship or connection and creates an instant dialogue. To start our haptic communication you need to be within “arms reach” he goes on to say “You touch to experience, to acquire knowledge, but when another is involved you touch to communicate; without thinking you automatically transfer information.”?(Lythgoe, n.d.)

Our other senses are of vital importance in our lives but it is the sense of touch in which we create these personal connections and it is only once you have touched something that interaction with our environment can occur and through interaction is when you truly begin to discover what it is and how it makes you feel. To quote Helen Keller, an American woman who became deaf and blind as a child “My hand is to me what your hearing and sight together are to you, it is the hand that binds me to the world of men and women” (Keller, n.d)

?Interacting with Humans

To understand where the future of interactive technologies lie and how these technologies could affect our senses on an emotional and haptic level, we need to address what is happening with current innovations. There have been recent breakthroughs in the area of quantified self-movement (QSM), which is the ability to read information from our body and turn it into data and information, which can then be used to control smart technology. An example of this is the brainwave tracking technology called ‘Muse’ created by the company Interaxon (Fig.3), which allows you to interact with games to check your concentration levels and alertness. However, the developer Arial Garton envisions a different kind of future for this technology saying, “Ultimately in the future, we will be able to play games and control appliances in our environment using only our mind” (Garton 2013)

?Fig. 3 – Brainwave: The Muse brain sensing headband in action at this month CES in Las Vegas

?To clarify ‘Muse’ is not a mind-reading technology. In a recent ‘Ask me Anything session on Reddit, co-founder Trevor Colemen explained “You can think of it like a heart-rate monitor for your brain’. However, we should consider Garton’s statement. This raises the question of whether we could still be deemed human if we lost the qualities that make us human. As aforementioned, when discussing the idea of emotion and our sensorium, if we begin to control technology with our minds we almost simultaneously chose to remove our need to have a haptic experience with the world and we also begin to diminish our ability to speak, which in turn partially removes our ability to portray emotion effectively. However, Marshall McLuhan states that technology should be seen as merely an extension to our senses, which is somewhat shown in the book ‘The Medium is the Message’ by (McLuhan and Fiore 1967) McLuhan states, “We again meet the wheel as ‘an extension of the foot’, while the book is ‘an extension of the eye’ clothing is an extension of the skin..”. He also states in ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy’ (1962: 24) that “sense ratios change when anyone sense or bodily or mental function is externalised in technological anyone from this we could conclude that while technologies such as Muse could potentially create a situation where we begin to lose the traits that make us human, when we look at McLuhan’s theory we are simply considerably extending the ratio of our senses and instead of dismissing a haptic sensation we are merely increasing the meaning and perception of what the sense of touch is.

This however is something I do not entirely agree on and refer to the point Swedish neurophysiologist, Matti Bergstrom makes when discussing the effect technology could have on our ability to feel which is?

?"If we don’t use our fingers if in childhood and youth we become “finger-blind”, this rich network of nerves is impoverished — Such damage may be likened to blindness itself. Perhaps worse, while a blind person may simply not be able to find this or that object, the finger-blind cannot understand its inner meaning and value."?(Auer, 2001, p.156)

?I find this to be something we should all consider, Darwin has noted mankind’s ability to evolve and adapt to the environment we are placed in so if we immerse ourselves in technology then what’s to say that over the next several hundred years a form of de-evolution occurs where we create an environment where touch is no longer necessary and we become physically numb to the world around us.?

If we continue referring to this kind of immersive technology, in the book ‘The Other America’ Michael Harrington states, “If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery, in impoverishment.” (Harrington 1962, Appendix: sct.1) However, Martin Lister quotes Raymond Williams in the book ‘New Media: An introduction’ saying “new technologies take forward existing practices that social groups already see as important or necessary.” (Lister 2009, p.86) From this, we can gather that Williams suggests the driving force behind technological advancement is formed around what we see as important or urgently needed within society, while Harrington refers to a situation where there is an expediential growth in technology, which overwhelms society and potentially leaves the population miserable. This is something that is further backed up in the book ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment by (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.95) wherein they propose that popular culture is used to manipulate?mass society ?into passivity. Shown when they state

“…The standardised forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of the consumers: that is why they are accepted with so little resistance. In reality, a cycle of manipulation and retroactive need in unifying the system ever more tightly.”?

Emotion in Society

A clear example of this type of situation occurring can be seen in the film ‘Demolition Man’ (Brambilla, 1993) starring Sylvester Stallone. We are introduced to a futuristic, utopian society, which completely relies upon technology to carry out everyday activates (Fig. 3) Further interest within the concern of their society is the way they show and portray their emotion/s. Technology has reached a point where they are so immersed that they are in a constant state of passiveness and because of this, within the film we find that the emotions of the character have become somewhat limited. They do not feel a variety of emotions and instead only ever feel happy and content with their everyday lives and due to the amount of technology around them find it hard to have emotional interactions and conversations with other characters in the film.

We could say that this is not a bad situation to find ourselves in as who doesn’t like to be happy? However, if we are still at a stage where Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not exist and machines are still unable to portray empathy or ‘real’ emotion, then creating a population that is unable to accurately portray human emotion as the one suggested in the film. We could then continue to argue that they are becoming more machine-like and are losing the attributes that make them human in the first place.

Fig. 4 – Screenshot from a scene within the film ‘The Demolition Man’

I find this concept very relevant to what is going on in today's society when we look at the increase in social networking, and the amount of smart technology we surround ourselves with we can also see evidence of this already occurring with the type of social interactions that are occurring in a day-to-day basis. In an interview with the Huffington post-Melissa Ortega, a child psychologist at New York’s Child Mind Institute, when referring to teenagers ability to communicate says?

?“...what I’m noticing is they may have trouble initiating interactions, those small talk situations. They don’t have as much experience doing it because they’re not engaging in it ever. They always have something else going on.” (Ortega, 2013)

Although this is referring back to somebodies social and language skills it can directly relate to the situation that is occurring in ‘The Demolition Man’. Due to the abundance of technology accessible to children and how often they are interacting with it, there are early signs that they are beginning to lose the emotional skills necessary to carry out a meaningful conversation. This could almost be associated with Jean Baudrillard's statement in (Simulacra and simulation, 1995) where he says, “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” which we could argue can accurately be applied to the amount of technology that surrounds us, the numbing effect it has on our emotions and our ability to communicate them effectively.

Artificial Simulation?

Within the areas of ‘Hyperreality,’ there are many examples and research that can show the potential and the current impact they are having on our identities and how we perceive to be human. A good example of this is photographer Robbie Coopers Avatar series (Fig 5) which is about virtual worlds and ordinary people, on his site Cooper quotes a passage from ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ by Jean Baudrillard which states?

“Simulation is an internal state as well as an external hyperreality. Our experience in the hyperreal world (held in the grip of simulacra and where much of the experience is mediated) is one in which media and medium are not simply located in their own spaces, but dispersed around us, in all forms of experience.”?(Baudrillard, 1995)

Fig. 5 – A photograph from the Coopers avatar series showing a woman next to her character

From this, we can say that within the notion of a simulated environment the ‘real’ ceases to exist and the hyperreal comes into existence, whereby you are immersed into an artificial world that exists around you in a variety of experiences. When we begin to deconstruct this notion we can again see McLuhan's theory of technology being an extension to ourselves. However this time on a mental level. Amber Case, in a TED talk entitled ‘We are all cyborgs now', stated that “Technology isn’t an extension of our physical self its an extension of our mental” (Case, 2010), so while we could say we are unable to physically move from the real world into the hyperreal we could be correct in saying it is possible to travel between the two mentally.

In the book New Media: An Introduction, John Ellis is quoted saying, “There is no realism, but there are realisms.” (Ellis 1982: 8) That is to say that in a hyper-realistic environment the notion of reality is unable to exist however there is the ability to have a combination of realisms to give the illusion of reality. This then begs the question; can our human senses exist in a place that does not exist? Well, if we refer back to McLuhan's theory that by immersing ourselves in technology we are merely extending the ratio of our senses, to the world we find ourselves in. Then the same could surely be applied to that of a hyper-realistic environment. This then means that we can indeed have a continued haptic experience, to a certain degree, within hyperreality. However, if we are to class this as using our sensorium then that must mean we are merging our consciousness with technology and allowing for a dehumanising effect and a form of devolution to occur. As instead of living our actual lives and having a haptic and emotional experience in the ‘real’ world we are living them in the hyperreal, or non-existent world.

Conclusion

If we now refer back to the question asked at the start of the paper. That being how these technologies have shaped and affected us as humans, we could conclude that while McLuhan makes a good argument that technology does not dismiss the senses. It merely increases them. We still have to bring attention to the fact that the sensual experience he refers to is still not what you would define to be real.

While you can argue that a haptic experience is possible within a hyper-realistic environment (if you wanted to consider the technology being used as an extension to our bodies) and that inventions such as Muse just extend our ability to have such an experience with the world, we are still unable to see these effects take place in a ‘real’ environment and they still only exist in a world that has been created by 'realisms', something which John Ellis determined not to be real. Furthermore, the effect these technologies could have on the traits that make us human, while having benefits, appear to be merely creating a shield between ourselves and the real world. They seem to create devolution that takes us from humanity towards the concept highlighted in ‘The Demolition man’ where we become machine-like, lacking the ability to show a variety of emotions with one another.

As mentioned at the start of this article when I quoted T B Brazelton,

“Touch functions on many levels of adaption, first to make survival possible and then to make life meaningful”,

which we are then able to portray through our emotions. So without the ability to use our sense of touch, in the real world, with our own hands how can life have any distinct meaning to it? If that meaning is being created from a combination of computer-created realisms in a non-existent world.\

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