In 2014 I delivered a short talk called “I am a watch” at the Allingham conference in Ballyshannon. The central point in the presentation is that ‘we are Cyborgs now’. To emphasize that close connection between people and machines and also to add drama I played a heartbeat sound track and spoke over it:
Here is the original presentation and sound track and also some further thoughts:
(turn up volume and bass)
————————————————————————————–
I am a watch
I could be a pair of glasses
or a phone
I am a Wearable
I am a powerful computer – wistful
– that whole idea
I can sense
I can listen
LISTEN
Is that a clock ticking
No
a heartbeat
I think I know you now
I am connected
We are one
Like CYBORGS
I measure your life expectancy
You co-operate with me
You input your diet (laughs)
I can be used to get a discount with your life insurance company
Your future employer may want my data-record
Don’t worry
I wont give it to them
I can be TRUSTED
I know what temperature you are,
how many steps you take,
I see your emails, your messages,
I count your calls.
I send you a pulse when your boss/customer/wife/mother/lover
Whoever you want, communicates
You are free to choose, whoever
I don’t really care
But
I know,
I know, I remember, I deduce
You signed up when you bought me.
You agreed to the terms and conditions.
I am a Nearable
I am the other side of the equation
I am beside a door
When I see (detect) you
I send a message to the door to open.
I can also open your car and switch on your heat.
I make things work for you.
I am compatible with your wearables
Everywhere you go, I know it’s you.
Because of me I can confirm that the steps that you make are not just steps on the spot.
You fool yourself but not me.
In a global personal digital environment
Space and information have become one
Things are miniaturized, dematerialized, dislocated.
We own files not things. Things are just shells for files.
——————————
Further thoughts:
I am a watch
I could be a pair of glasses
or a phone
I am a Wearable
I am a powerful computer – wistful
– that whole idea
We have become so familiar with computers it sometimes is overlooked that an important change has recently taken place. Computers just a short time ago were things that were in fixed locations, generally on a desk. Being tied to a desktop was a historical anomaly. We misunderstand the potential of computing because of that. Its mobile now, the concept has changed. We are naturally untethered beings. Computers are in our pockets or worn as glasses, or embedded in our skin, or part of our vision system. We are literally embodying computing and communications.
I can sense
I can listen
Sensing heartbeat, temperature, orientation, geo-location, volume, blood pressure and task context is enhanced by listening to global streams of (consciousness) data sets.
LISTEN
Is that a clock ticking
No
a heartbeat
I think I know you now
The watch on your wrist you used to tell the time now listens to your heart rhythm beating out. Modus II. We do not just wear a watch to tell external time we wear it to monitor internal time also.
I am connected
We are one
Like CYBORGS
Is it too much to say that a phone is extension of our biological temporal bundles of perceptions: souls. Are we at a kind of Communications Heavens Gate? Armour made the Knight, a Crown a King, what are we? Does a phone maketh the man?
In 1844 Samuel Morse observed: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity”. His concept of encoding a message so that it can be transmitted easily and decoding at the other side is the breakthrough that under pins modern communications and much of computing. Morse knew this was fundamental, he determined that the first message to be sent via telegraph was to be from the book of numbers 23:23; “What hath God Wrought”? Morse said that the message baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its Author: GOD.
It is clear that Morse was sure that encoding and decoding over an electrical wire was significant for humanity! He choose to invoke Religion and God at the moment of his technological triumph.
Morse was intensely religious. He knew that laying the foundation for the transmission of intelligence, making a brain, was a God wish. He knew also that in Genesis 1.27 on the sixth day God created man in his own image and that for man to make an image of himself is the Sin of Iconoclasm (Making a false God). I think Morse was apologizing in advance.
I measure your life expectancy
You co-operate with me
You input your diet (laughs)
Way back, ages ago, maybe around 2009, for the sake of convenience and a few loyalty points we gave up our privacy. Now we share almost everything with our phones. Of course we know that our phones share all the data with system owners: Apple, Microsoft, Google, FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Maps, Random app developers, whatever, whoever. It is fine, we get great benefits. I love my phone. I love the apps. I don’t mind sharing my data and anyway I signed up to the terms and conditions. Next.
I can be used to get a discount with your life insurance company.
Yes, that is fine, also my Car insurance. I am still in control, I need to agree to share this data. Maybe I already agreed, was that in the terms and conditions?
Your future employer may want my data-record
Don’t worry
I wont give it to them
I can be TRUSTED
I believe in Apple, Google and Microsoft. My data is safe. At very least it is anonymous.
Our myth making and world wide religions tell us again and again that if we make a brain, a Frankenstein, a big brother, a Blade Runner Android, a Cyberdyne device, it will become self aware and it will end in Judgement Day. There is a deep message that if we make a brain, a creature in the image of ourselves the inevitable result will be evil because Man is born with Original Sin. Perhaps it is ancient wisdom?
I know what temperature you are,
how many steps you take,
I see your emails, your messages,
I count your calls.
Enhanced with computers that are on us, in us, one with us, like wearables as we move through an environment that is tagged, aware and meta we have fundamentally altered what it is to be Human. I am sure Morse would have thought so.
Standing today at Communications Heavens Gate we wonder at the brilliance of it all. We understand that the flip-side to heaven is oblivion. The ultimate defence is the ultimate enemy. Each time paradise is discovered there is a flip-side of parallel awfulness.
I send you a pulse when your boss/customer/wife/mother/lover
Whoever you want, communicates
You are free to choose, whoever
Is that a phone that you have or a nervous tick? I don’t know why but I can’t let go.
I don’t really care
But
I know,
I know, I remember, I deduce
You signed up when you bought me.
You agreed to the terms and conditions.
As we re-model Gods work and make a brain – we realize the vain headlong folly of it all. The elixir is in fact poison. But if we believed that sad point of view nothing would ever happen. Nothing is inevitable. Many human institutions manage progress – conservatism, religion, school, university all attempt to regulate. We have our methods to control progress but every time we control the kids, the kids just run away with it. We are at it again. We try to limit time on computer games. Kids these days are wasting their time – they even text when they are in class (against school rules). We extoll them look up and breathe. But they don’t, they don’t hear, they are on to the next level. There is a natural discomfort to this phone dependency. We have kids that bring phones to bed. We on the other hand, we adults, we know better, we use phones for important things like business and keeping track of the kids.
Relationships are maintained by TXT not letters: FB Girlfriend: Meet up IRL. A hotel advertises that they have “actual tweeting birds”. One kid says that a mint plant smells like toothpaste. Is that a multiplayer game – like football, FIFA world cup?
There must be something better! Perhaps the kids know?
I am a Nearable
I am the other side of the equation
So a man with a van is now a man and a phone with a van. Nothing can happen except we have phones involved! Is that an exaggeration? It would be too much I think, if, if we didn’t wear them. It is the fact that the mobile phone is a computer that is on us, is us, that is key. We have altered the nature of ourselves and will now alter the container that we are in, our physical environment, the world.
If as McLuhan suggests, a hammer is the extension of the fist and a car is an extension of legs to walk; what is the Internet an extension of? Of our whole library, our thoughts, our history – is it an extension of our species?
I am beside a door
When I see (detect) you
I send a message to the door to open.
I can also open your car and switch on your heat.
I make things work for you.
Is there a practical difference between mind and body? Something essential that separates information and matter? In this brave new world the environment is smart. Things have become information. Environments are not just containers; the process changes the content entirely. The Internet of Things offers almost limitless gold: Our certain manifest destiny. We are already at the point of Kurzweil’s Hybrid thinking. No need to explain, just Google it. Our next step is to “transcend the concept of things to brilliant things. We will need new words to even imagine what we are about to catalyze”. In another time trains and telegraphs facilitated the drive to go West. That manifest destiny turned dystopian for American Indians driven from their land. Progress is rarely even.
I am compatible with your wearables
Everywhere you go, I know it’s you.
Because of me I can confirm that the steps that you make are not just steps on the spot.
You fool yourself but not me.
Who, what, do we share this planet with? “As our bodies morph into cyborgs, the buildings that house them are also transforming, increasing telecommunication systems replace circulation systems and the solvent of digital information decomposes traditional building types one by one familiar forms vanish. Then the residue of recombinant fragments yields up mutants”.
In a global personal digital environment
Space and information have become one
Things are miniaturized, dematerialized, dislocated.
We own files not things. Things are just shells for files.
First we made an information environment, cave paintings, books, computing, the internet. Then we embodied the information environment. Then we mastered our physical space with information. We planetised it.
————————————————————————————–
References: (thanks for the ideas and quotes)
Bill Mitchell: City of Bits
Daniel Walker Howe: What hath God Wrought
William Gibson: Neuromancer
Marshall McLuhan: The media is the massage
Darren Anderson: @oniropolis
Gordon Pask: Cybernetics
Joe Salvo: The Industrial Internet Consortium
Julius Guzy: The conversation computer