Becoming Human

Digital technology is advancing at a rate exponentially faster than we are capable of keeping up with it. Presumably, the intention of technology is to work for us. Yet as much as we try to use technology to simplify our lives we are required to learn more and more to keep up with it. Keeping up with it is difficult enough, however we are also challenged to understand and work with something that is fundamentally not at all like us.

We've made great progress from command line entry of early home computers like the TRS-80 to GUIs used by modern computers and devices today. We're beginning to replace clumsy mouse input devices and game controllers with physical gestures on touchscreens and Wii-mots, bringing us much closer to a human analog interaction that suits our nature and evolutionary history. Since Don Norman wrote his essay, "Being Analog." We have indeed come a long way. However I believe Don Norman is challenging us to push further than how we interact with technology and explore a fundamental change in the DNA of technology itself.

In our current model, the user is tasked with accommodating the needs of the system they interact with. As the user changes, the system is incapable of changing with it, at least not without some help. Unless there was a way digital technology could learn from it's users and adapt to fit their individual needs. Artificial intelligence may be the answer, more specifically bio-inspired computing. Bio-inspired computing utilizes an array of programs that go through a lifecycle where they are automatically created, modified (or mutated), combined (or cross-bred), and deleted to reprogram a system to adapt to changing circumstances.(1) Utilizing technology with this approach can predict human response, and grow to meet our preferences. Consequently making a very non-human digital technology capable of changing as we change. The more we use it the more it becomes like us.

1. Biologically inspired computing, From Wikipedia

Retrieved September 9, 2009, from Wikipedia website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-inspired_computing