Columnists
Surfers' paradise
Dixe Wills
'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' So enquired the
inveterate misogynist Professor Henry Higgins. While inveterate
misogyny is still with us (if you're not convinced of this, have a
peek at the achingly depressing #yesallwomen hashtag on twitter),
the question in the brave go-ahead 21st century has mutated.
Nowadays all the hip kids are asking, 'Why can't a thing be more
like a human?'
The answer, apparently, is that it's about to become so. At
least that's what another professor, Peter McOwan of the University
of London, suggested at a lecture he gave at the British Science
Association.
In case you missed it - I know you've been busy with your
particle physics experiments lately - I'll give you a rough and
somewhat embellished sketch. In the future, probably a not terribly
distant one, fridges will know when you're running dangerously
short of sun-dried shishito peppers and order some more on the
internet; umbrellas will beep at you if they know you're going out
and they think it's going to rain later; your car will 'communicate
with the train it predicts you will be able to catch and find out
if there are any of your favourite brand Danish pastries left in
the buffet'. In short, the soi disant Internet of Things will soon
be upon us.
But that's not all. McOwan believes we will enter the age of
'affective computing' in which computerised objects will learn to
recognise our facial expressions and body language. 'As smart
devices start to work with us and understand our social rules,' he
declares, 'we may increasingly see them as human-like - a world
filled with tools designed to be our friends.'
In some small ways, that's already the case. Many adverts we see
on the internet are there because websites know our browsing and
purchasing habits and reflect them back to us. If you use Google (a
popular search engine, m'lud), the results you are shown are based
in part on what you have looked for before (it's yet another reason
to use DuckDuckGo instead). This sense of being known and responded
to personally by an inanimate object is one we're probably going to
have to get used to.
This all throws up some questions that we'd do well to start
asking ourselves. Where does the line lie between delegating tasks
to machines and ceding our autonomy to them? When it comes to
privacy, how much personal data do we really want to give away, and
do we care how different facts about us are combined and used? And
if smart machines can smooth our passage through life, removing as
many unpredictable elements from it as is possible, will we be
bored to death? Eliphaz told Job that we were born to trouble as
the sparks fly upward. What will happen to your humanity when your
best friend the smart house has detected the sparks, resolved the
electrical fault, and made you a nice cup of tea just the way you
like it?