The Spreading Of Machine Intellect In Our Daily Life
The article “You Are Already Living Inside a Computer” has a very strong take on the fact that very soon, human intellect will become machine intellect, and that computers have taken over our everyday needs, wants, and basic tasks. Bogost says “The ultimate dream is to be online all the time, or at least connected to a computational machine of some kind” (pg. 12). Computers have appealed to humans in such a way that now they have “so effectively persuaded us to move our lives inside of them” (pg. 14).
In today’s day and age, people almost refuse to do anything if there is not some sort of computing device around them. When Turing purposed the idea that a computer might be able to almost trick the minds by have a machine pose as a human being, he paved the way for what computers as well as artificial intelligence mean for us today. Bogost has a certain fear of what the future may hold, and that fear is that no matter how mundane computers are, they may still take us all over in the end. Ian Bogost has a bachelor’s in philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California as well as a masters in Comparative Literature from the University of California. In 2008 he became an associate professor in the school of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia institute of Technology, and he believes that technology as taken over even the most mundane aspect in our daily lives. Smart devices have now spread to everyday objects like gas gauges, door bells, and even bike locks. Manufactures have been trying to turn everyday objects into smart devices because consumers are willing to buy anything that seems appealing.
This has allowed them “more revenue, more control, and more opportunity for planned obsolescence” (Bogost, pg. 2). Even the most ridiculous smart devices are becoming the normal way of life and it poses some issues. One being that our privacy is now in even more jeopardy than it was before. Take for example the in-home vacuum cleaner, Rumba. It is now basically scanning our floors to sell the plans to big businesses. Another issue that we should be factoring in is the cost of these smart devices. Why would we pay one hundred and fifty dollars for a bike lock, when a simple bike lock cost a tenth of that price? The idea that an expensive bike lock can “Eliminate the hassle and frustration of a lost keys and forgotten combinations” (Bogost pg. 3), is one of the appeals, but the fact of the matter is that if it is considered a “smart” device, we want it. We have become accustomed to a life of smart devices that we can not imagine a world without it. A third issue that has come up in Bogost’s article is that we are not able to manage abuse without the help from a computer. Twitter proposed an idea to help stop abuse in their forum by having the computer identify the abuse and block it, but humans are negating around this solution due to human error. Twitter believes that the way to fix this error is computational and not via humans learning from their errors thus proposing the question “why would anyone ever choose a solution that doesn’t involve computers, when computers are available?” (Bogost, pg. 9).
People are choosing computers as a link between them to help settle disagreements instead of finding a solution and fixing it themselves. No one thought that we would end up needing a smart monitor, thermostat, or toaster to fulfill our day to day lives, but now that we have access to them we seem to not be able to be able to do daily tasks without them. However, people who use smart devices are starting to pull back a bit, and “being away from them now feels deadening, rather than being attached to them without end” (pg. 12). Partially due to this reason, manufactures are producing more smart devices, so we are almost forced to interact with them, and human behavior is in jeopardy of being nothing more than the reflection of the machines we have created.
