Ethics of the Future

The Ethics of Transhumanism

2011-05-30T23:57:00.007+01:00

The popular TV series Heroes depicts a group of people who have evolved to have special abilities, like the ability to fly and telepathy. In the show, characters with superpowers are ostracised by society when people think they would use their superpowers to hurt people. This is in line with other stories in popular culture, where people with special abilities have often been portrayed crudely as either superheroes or villains.

But many ordinary people out there have “superpowers” already thanks to mechanical or technological enhancements. They are real-life cyborgs, defined as a being with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts. And what’s more, with our growing reliance on technology, we all seem to be well on our way to becoming cyborgs. What kind of ethical dilemmas might this bring to our society?

Daniel Kish, a man who’s been sightless since a year old, is still able to mountain bike and camp out in the wilderness alone. He uses echolocation, the technique that bats use to see in the dark, which involves him clicking his tongue and interpreting the sound of the returning echo to figure out his surroundings. Most people rely on sight to navigate but Daniel has learned to use echolocation to do most things that sighted people can do, and in certain instances, can “see” his surroundings much better than them. His dream is to help all sight-impaired people see the world as clearly as he does. He is developing canes for the blind that would create the same range of sonar waves that bats send out, and hearing enhancements that would enable those blind people to hear a wider range of sound waves that are returned so they could navigate accurately just like a bat does.

Enhancements like these are going one step further than, say, artificial limbs in that instead of acting as a poor substitute for an ability a person has lost, they actually give “superhuman” powers that are not part of ordinary human biological make-up and allow the person to do things other humans cannot do.

We are increasingly relying on technology like mobile phones and the internet in our everyday lives. Mobile phones and other computing devices are also becoming smaller and smaller, and are equipped with more sensors than ever before to connect our physical activity to the internet. Nike+ trainers wirelessly connect to an iPod and tracks the distance and pace of a person’s run. Apple have also filed a patent for a visual display system which could provide wearable iPod glasses. How long until medical/technological advances allow us to have these devices embedded in our bodies for better user experience and ease? If it were possible now and100% safe, would you choose to gain some “superpowers” by becoming a cyborg?

I would. I often wish I could have a built-in GPS system because I’m so hopeless with directions. I would be lost within a minute without Google Maps on my mobile in any new neighbourhood. I’d also love to have a built-in internet connection so I could have all the information on the internet at my fingertips (or even better, just in front of my eyes without needing to fiddle with external interfaces) at all times. With the ability to turn it on and off, of course.

With the increasingly affordable and accessible advances in genetics and synthetic biology, cyborgs will probably become commonplace in our society in the future. And cyborgs will no longer be an “Other” but our girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, friends, and parents. In fact, some of these people in your life may already be cyborgs.

There are people who already advocate the development and use of technology to improve the human condition by eliminating aging and enhancing human intellectual, physical and psychological capabilities. This international intellectual and cultural movement is called Transhumanism (often abbreviated to H+ or h+). They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".

I’ve explored the ethics of designer babies in a previous blog post. Many of the same arguments could apply to transhumanism. Many people feel uncomfortable with "playing God", and philosophically and culturally, many people place a moral value on being “natural.” But don’t people have the right to change their bodies whichever way they see fit, as long as it’s not harmful to themselves or others?

Others argue that the ‘advantages’ endowed upon transhumans would stop them from experiencing character-building trials and therefore make their lives less meaningful. But wouldn’t a person with greater abilities tackle more advanced and difficult projects in order to challenge themselves to achieve excellence? Could this scenario then create a two-tier society where transhumans feel superior to their non-modified peers?

Equally, could non-modified humans ostracise transhumans out of fear or jealousy, as in the TV show Heroes? It may even exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor as emerging human enhancement technologies would be disproportionately available to those with greater financial resources, thereby creating a "genetic divide". In the worst case scenario often depicted in sci-fi, transhumans, more powerful and intelligent than “mere mortals”, may try to enslave or annihilate humans.

Although this is all speculation far into the future, I’d say that any technology which would improve the general health and conditions of human beings is a good thing. Equal distribution is an issue that needs to be considered, as well as tolerance on both human and transhuman sides. Adequate laws may need to be put in place to ensure equal access to such technology. Education programmes would let people see the benefits and minimise discrimination. But maybe the answer is to not to distinguish between transhuman and human so much in the first place. As I’ve argued in this blog before, technology is only as good as the people who use it. Fearing or blaming the technology that could potentially bring about a lot of good for a lot of people is counterproductive.

As long as there is a shared morality, free will and empathy, why label people?

Life in the Cloud

2011-04-26T17:24:00.003+01:00

Ever fancied having a hot girlfriend who simply adores you? She’d write loving messages on your Facebook wall for all to see and tweet sweet nothings to you all day long. She’d never nag and you’d never have to deal with her issues. You’d also never actually meet her, because, er, she would live in the cloud!

Cloud Girlfriend launched today as a dating site but “thousands” had signed up already according to their site after massive pre-launch hype on social networks and blogs. According to their website before the launch, only four simple steps stood between you and “your perfect girl”:

"Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network. Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl."

In an interview with PCMag, co-founder David Fuhriman said, “The girlfriend is operated by a real girl. It is not a sex chat or pornography service.” Woah, hold on - “the girlfriend is operated”?! Can modern life get any more surreal and bizarre?

Cloud Girlfriend would’ve been the stuff of sci-fi pre-internet, but the concept of virtual characters isn’t new. In early online social games or MUD’s (Multi-User Domains) like LambdaMOO, users created virtual characters and/or bots that had sexual encounters and relationships with each other. Same in Second Life. There is a myriad of virtual girlfriend apps which are very popular – users of a popular South Korean app called Honey, It’s Me! receive four video calls and a shower of loving text messages a day from ‘Mina’, a twenty-something model, all for a daily fee of £1.26. On launch, the app attracted 80,000 downloads a day.

There seems to be an obvious demand for services like this. But in any of the above scenarios, people have an understanding that their online ‘partners’ are virtual characters. What made me feel incredulous and slightly uncomfortable about the premise of Cloud Girlfriend pre-launch was that she would have been interacting with her ‘boyfriend’ – or more accurately, ‘client’, or ‘user’ – pretending to be a real person. Well, there would have been a real person behind the account, but she would have been acting out a false relationship in an environment where people are generally believed to be having real relationships, not just with their significant others but with friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. It’s a kind of intimacy prostitution where no real feelings can ever be exchanged.

One of the reasons that Cloud Girlfriend couldn’t launch as a virtual girlfriend service as promised is probably due to Facebook's (and other social networking sites’) terms & conditions. Facebook specifically forbids creating fake accounts or impersonating someone else. I suppose this restriction is in place because Facebook is a commercially funded site that collects user data for advertisers, and fake accounts do not add value for them. But this rule also provides users with boundaries. We value authenticity and honesty in people because we don’t want to invest our time and emotions into something that’s not real. We feel uneasy when we can’t distinguish between real and fake, as seen in our uncanny valley reaction to robots that look or behave a bit too much like humans.

I understand that a lot of people signed up for Cloud Girlfriend for the novelty factor. They don’t really want a virtual relationship – it’s just a bit of fun. But I wonder about those people who may really want to be seen to have a relationship that doesn’t actually exist. It makes me feel sad that they wouldn’t want to go out and find a real relationship in which there is give and take, a shared understanding, and shared real life experiences. It also makes me sad that they would want to be seen to have something they haven’t got, for this must stem from insecurity and lack of time/intentions/success with real people.

More than ever, we live in public. We freely share information about ourselves, our whereabouts, our ‘relationship status’. But is this making us compare ourselves with others and more conscious of what we seemingly lack? Is this making it seem more important for some people to appear a certain way online rather than be that way in their real lives?

The boundaries between real and virtual are increasingly blurred in our culture of simulation. Some may even ask why one’s virtual self is ontologically inferior to one’s physical self. (That's a subject matter for another blog post.)

But at the end of the day, here's the real question: when you’re in trouble, feeling lonely, in need of a hug, would you be happy with a superficially loving Facebook message from a 'cloud girlfriend', or would you prefer someone real to care about you and listen to you? I know which I’d prefer.

But is 'something' really better than 'nothing' even when that 'something' isn't real?

Maybe it’s a good thing that Cloud Girlfriend didn’t launch as its original premise after all.

Can suicides ever be ethically acceptable?

2011-03-31T21:32:00.002+01:00

Fans of the TV show Futurama may remember the Suicide Booth, which, for 25 cents, will let you kill yourself, with the choice of “quick and painless” or “slow and horrible.” Of course, the concept is ridiculous and disconcerting and has been created for comic effect. Or has it?

Check out the “Deliverance Machine,” which asks the patient a series of questions and automatically administers a lethal injection if the correct answers are made. The system and questions are so constructed that the supplier of the machine cannot be held responsible for ending the life of the patient, who takes responsibility by operating it. Four people killed themselves in Australia using the Deliverance Machine before the law allowing this was repealed. (The machine is now on display in the British Science Museum.)

So do people have a right to end their own lives?

Whether you’ve answered “yes” or “no” to that question, the fact remains that people can and do. We are but fragile blood and flesh, and it’s disturbingly easy to end our lives should we choose to. UN reports that more than 1 million people take their own lives each year - more than the combined annual deaths from homicides and wars. Suicide is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under 35.

Suicide and assisted suicide are illegal in many parts of the world. But many people see suicide as an individual’s ‘right’. The right to self-determination asserts that we all have the freedom to make decisions about our own lives, and should not be stopped by acting on those decisions as long as they are not going to harm another person. As long as the person is sane and truly wishes to die, and as long as they do not harm anyone else by their actions, what can be the reason for stopping them?

But do we really have 'rights' that extend to ending our own lives? And is it possible to kill yourself without there being consequences for other people? The answer is no. On a practical level, somebody will have to find your body and dispose of it. This could be your family, a friend, neighbour, or even a complete stranger. On an emotional level, a suicide could have a devastating impact on the people left behind. A person considering suicide may think that they will “get over it” and that his or her right for self-determination overrides the emotional impact on others. Does it?

Some people would rather end their own lives than be a burden on others. Groups like Dignitas and Dignity in Dying make a powerful case to allow terminally ill people to make their own decisions about their lives. If someone is physically suffering, and nothing can be done to ease their suffering, it could be argued that it's kinder to allow that person to die. The tear-inducing TV drama ‘A Short Stay in Switzerland,’ based on the true story of Dr. Anne Turner, gives you an insight into why someone may decide to kill themselves in this situation and how their family can come to terms with that decision. Personally, I would like to have that choice to end my life if my health is irrevocably taken away from me and I can no longer live with dignity and joy.

However, opponents of assisted suicide argue that ill people may feel pressure from their carers and families to end their lives should suicides become legal or socially acceptable. Recently, 17 workers committed suicides in an electronics factory in China, one of them leaving a note explaining that he had done so to provide for his family, as the factory paid a remuneration for the families of workers who died on-site. (The programme of remuneration was cancelled after they found this note.) That person must have weighed up the cost of his living on versus the benefit it would endow upon his family. In an ideal world, monetary considerations would never enter into matters of life and death, yet it does in our imperfect world.

In certain cultures, suicides are acceptable and even advocated under certain circumstances. Japanese samurai killed themselves in a ritual called seppuku rather than being captured by their enemies and losing their honour. Horrifically, in certain sharia cultures, women and girls who are raped are expected to commit suicide, to spare everyone the embarrassment of an honour crime. It breaks my heart to think of people who’d rather kill themselves than go on living in shame, shame bestowed upon them by society and arbitrary rules of conduct. This is totally ethically unacceptable.

I find the beauty of life overwhelming - even when bad things happen, I think of people who are less fortunate than I am and it puts my problems into perspective. People like Daniel Kish and Kainat Soomro show that no matter what happens to you, you can use that experience to go on and make life better for yourself and for others.

This little fact may make you uncomfortable, but here goes: we are all going to die one day, and whether we think about it or not, the option to end our lives is always there too. People who are determined to kill themselves will do so, for we are but fragile masses of bones, blood and flesh. We are capable of inflicting great pain upon ourselves and others. But on the flip side, we are capable of some pretty awesome things too: happiness, laughter, understanding, connection, exploration, learning, physical and mental achievement. Most of all, we have the power to decide our own paths.

Maybe the answer is not to ask whether it is ethical for people to commit suicide or not. Maybe the answer is to live each moment with kindness to ourselves and others, gratitude for all the amazing things and people in our lives, respect for each person’s right to live life to their full potential, and with sheer wonder at the fact that we, a bunch of molecules flying through time-space, are us.

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Today's story:

Behind the Cherry Blossoms

The building was hidden behind a path lined with cherry blossoms. They swayed gently in the spring breeze and filled the air with a sweet rosy smell. As Tony walked down the path, he thought about how these cherry blossoms would carry on blooming and smelling lovely like this, even when he was dead. The thought didn’t make him sad - it was a mere fact.

A small, nondescript building came into view as he approached the end of the path. At first Tony wasn’t sure if he’d come to the right place, but he soon spotted a small sign that said ‘Centre for Assisted Suicide’. He rang the door bell and was buzzed in.

Inside was a small reception with a bored looking young woman behind a desk. Tony flashed her a polite smile as he approached but she just diverted her eyes.

“Hi, my name is Tony Mo. I have an appointment for 3pm.”

“Please have a seat. The doctor will call you,” said the receptionist, mechanically.

An older woman also sat waiting in the room, surrounded by her family. A female doctor came out and called her name. The family exchanged nervous looks then they all disappeared through the door.

Tony moved to let them pass, then sat down. The chair he was sitting on was reasonably comfy though the green cloth padding on it was a bit worn-down. The air conditioning was on full blast, but he could still hear the sound of children playing outside. Again, Tony thought, all this will continue when I die, except there will be no more me to notice those things and I will be as cold as this air. And that wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. He was but a tiny component on a circuit board relentlessly moving down a conveyor belt in the electronics factory of life.

His factory dorm mates had said goodbye to him that morning with stoic handshakes and manly embraces. “See you on the other side,” they said. They too had known that the conveyor belt would carry on, bringing ever more components and more circuit boards they would slot together with their hands, day after day, hour after hour.

Tony took out the picture of his son and wife that he always carried in his wallet. His wife was dressed in a flowery top and wearing very pink lipstick. His son Rory’s eyes were wide open and his mouth was slightly agape, staring out at Tony as if asking, “who are you?” It was a fair question, considering Tony had only seen his son a dozen times in all his seven years of life.

On public holidays Tony would ride the bus for 4 hours to his rural hometown, with a bag full of little toys and trinkets for his family. Rory was taller and more taciturn each time he visited, and mostly ignored Tony. His wife would give him a quick embrace and start to tell him all the news and gossip from the neighbourhood. The whole experience was always strangely disconcerting for Tony - he was used to them being pixels on a screen that spoke through the speakers on his PC. Of course, he loved them and they loved him. But this was another mere fact he had memorised, not felt. Deep in his heart, he knew they would not miss him, the same way that he only missed them in an abstract way.

He hoped they would feel grateful for what he was about to do, for the government was quite generous in their rewards for people who decided to end their lives. It was much cheaper for the state to pay off a one-off remuneration than pay his pension and healthcare into old age, especially now that the overpopulation problem was becoming acute. He might as well, he thought.

He was drawn out of his reverie when the doorbell rang again. The receptionist pressed the button and the door opened. His heart skipped a beat when he saw who walked in. She was slight and light-skinned and wore her shoulder-length hair in a high ponytail. He would have recognised that fearless walk anywhere.

Tony and Rachel had grown up in the same village. He’d had a crush on her for as long as he could remember, admiring her for her perfect little ponytails and her ability to climb trees and cry at will. They got together in high school for a few weeks, but then her family had moved away and they’d lost touch. He had always wondered what she was up to, where she ended up living and working, whether she was married and had children, if she wondered about him too.

But what was she doing here? This was not how it was meant to happen.

The family who had gone in earlier came back into the reception, some of them openly sobbing. The old woman was no longer with them. Tony watched Rachel turn her head to stare after them. He could see fear in her eyes.

“Tony Mo?”

The doctor was back and calling his name. Rachel started when she heard his name. Their eyes met. In a split second, those two pairs of eyes had asked and answered an infinite number of questions.

Tony stood up. He had made up his mind.

The Future of Love

2011-02-27T19:36:00.006Z

Would you trust your genes to tell you whom you should fall in love with?

With analyses of the data from The Human Genome Project well under way and DNA testing becoming increasingly cheaper and accessible, some couples are choosing to take premarital genetic compatibility tests. These tests claim to answer many questions relating to the health of your offspring and the future of your relationship:

Are certain genetic disorders and diseases likely to pass on to your offspring?
What are the chances of a successful pregnancy?
How attractive are you genetically programmed to find each other, and are the levels of attractions equally matched?
Is your partner likely to cheat on you?

These are all questions most people would love to know the answer to before they make a life-long commitment. But can genetic scanning really predict something as fickle and celebrated and potentially life-changing as love? If there was a dating website that showed you potential matches according to your genetic profile, would you use it?

What if you fall in love with someone and then a genetic test tells you that he is likely to cheat, or you really want children but she could not have children, or that your children were likely to be born with a genetic disorder? Would you then break things off with him or her? Would you not bother embarking on a relationship with someone you know to be "unsuitable" in the long run, or would you live in the moment and just go for it?

Scientists are learning more and more about exactly what attracts us to the object of our desire. Studies have found that both men and women find certain physical traits that suggest fertility attractive, such as a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 in women and a larger jaw in men. It has also been suggested that the human capacity to experience love evolved as a mechanism to keep two people together to raise a child, or as a signal to potential mates that the partner will be a good parent. According to evolutionary biology, both lust and love are merely involuntary reactions developed by our natural compulsion to propagate our genes.

Although we tend to imagine ‘lust’ to be a physical phenomenon and ‘love’ to be an emotion, both are triggered by neurochemical signals in our brain. The feeling of love can be just as physical as lust and similarly, lust can be just as emotional or psychological. In 2000, two London scientists scanned the brains of 70 people who had recently fallen in love. The MRI images revealed that romantic love is a lot like addiction to alcohol or drugs – the brain released the same chemicals of pleasure and attributed it to the object of desire. When they were not in the presence of their loved ones, the brain released the same chemicals associated with craving and addiction. At the same time, certain areas of the brain that are associated with fear got deactivated. This infatuation/addiction stage of love lasts for a few months to few years, after which the relationship settles into a more stable companionship without the spikes of heady chemicals we associate with the early stages of love.

Potentially in the future, scientists could decode exactly what chemical and neurological processes happen in our brains when we fall in love and could artificially replicate the experience in anyone. We could go out and buy the modern-day equivalent of a love potion and fall in love with someone, and get that person to do the same and fall in love with us. ‘Be My Valentine’ cards could be sent with a love pill enclosed. When the initial buzz and the excitement of a relationship wear off, we could just pop a pill that could top up our love chemicals and everything will be rosy again. Think about the amount of unhappy marriages and drama that could be spared, along with how this affects children of unhappy parents.

We may even take this idea a step further. What if the love of your life could be designed to be the love of your life, before birth? Currently, our knowledge of genetics is not enough to select much more than gender or detect certain diseases in unborn children, but advances in genetics in the future will probably make it possible for parents to ‘design’ their babies. As our understanding of the human genome increases and genetic technologies become cheaper, some day in the far future, we may even be able to design people exactly to our specifications, in terms of looks, personality and character. Imagine that two people could be designed to be perfectly suited to each other. Of course, there would be ethical questions of whether the parents have this much right to shape their unborn children’s futures, and does mum know best any way? People our parents hope we end up with aren’t always the ones that we end up falling head-over-heels in love with. The gap between the rich and the poor may also be widened as rich families make their offspring fall in love with other rich heirs.

But with the amount of people who end up in unsuitable relationships or “settle” because they come to a certain age and they haven’t fallen in love, wouldn’t you like to have the option of having someone in the world who was literally “meant for you”?

Does it matter if two people have come to love each other naturally or “with help”? There are stigmas attached to “artificial” methods of meeting romantic partners even now, e.g. through dating websites or arranged marriages. This is because historically and culturally, we idealise romantic love. But statistically, arranged marriages are much more likely to last longer and couples from arranged marriages also tend to report a greater satisfaction with their marriage. Over a long period, having similar attitudes and values is probably more important than the initial excitement and thrill of the chase that we idealise in our culture.

To what extent are human beings more than just a set of chemical/physical reactions? It’s true that we’re composed of billions of cells that are being created, changing, and dying every second: blood cells, bone cells, hair cells, gut cells, cells that think and produce emotions and store memories in our brains: memories that sometimes fade, or sometimes, don’t remain true. We are not the same from millisecond to millisecond. If this is the case, how does the concept of mate for life work? Experience plays a part. What we have seen of our parents’ relationship, past experience with partners and cultural upbringing all play a part in our choices in love.

But love still remains one of the most beautiful and most mysterious of human conditions. When it strikes, you feel all sparkly and shimmery inside, like a snow globe that’s been turned upside down. And the best part is that we never know who that indescribably lovely and perfect (for us) person who will turn our world upside down will be, or when…

At least that’s the way it is for now.

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Today's story: What could have been

When I was seven years old, the girl who was meant for me was killed. She had been riding her bike along the dusky road near both our houses when a teenage boy coming home from football practice ran her over. He had not been drinking, he had not been speeding.

An unlucky accident.

I remember mum receiving a phone call that evening. She gasped, then kept saying, “oh you poor thing. You poor, poor thing.” Afterwards, she called me over and told me that Daria had gone to Heaven. I asked her if Daria could fly now. My mum burst into tears and said, “yes, Darling. Of course she can.”

We had been born within an hour of each other, in the same hospital. Our parents had told us that we’ll get married and never split up. We used to play house together and she would say, “let’s go out in the garden and have a barbeque.” And we’d go out and I’d pretend to build a barbeque with leaves and stones and she’d pour water into little plastic cups, pretending it was lemonade. I remember admiring her pretty yellow shoes with a little blue bow on it. Looking at those shoes, I felt so proud and happy that she was my girlfriend and that one day she’d be my wife.

That was thirty years ago.

I look at my wife, Helen, now. She is beautiful. She’s the kind of person who makes lemonade out of lemons, and she wears pretty shoes too.

We took the pills that made us fall in love exactly 13 years ago. We already loved each other, but taking the pills made sure that we stayed in love.

But even now, I wonder how things may have been different if Daria had still been alive. Our genetic codes had been tested, matched and tweaked so we were perfect for each other. Her every smile, every cell, every breath had been designed so that we would fall in love and get married and have a beautiful family.

I wish there was a pill to make me forget, because even while I’m filled with love for my wife, my heart still remembers.

A Tale of Gamification

2011-01-30T13:44:00.003Z

“John! John! John! John!”

100,000 people were chanting his name. The sound shook the whole stadium and swallowed John. This is what God must feel like, he thought as he stepped into the spotlight amidst wild cheering.

“Wow, thanks, guys,” He began his prepared speech with a smirk. “Player Of The Year, again. Is it really that hard to beat me?”

The crowd chuckled and clapped. John had them eating out of his hands. As he joked and bantered his way through his speech and stepped down from the podium to thunderous applause, he felt dirty and tired, like a lung after a pack of chain-smoked cigarettes.

He had won Player of the Year for five years in a row now. His combined score from Love, Money, Career, Celebrity, Shopping and Friends categories was at least a third higher than the second closest contender. He hadn’t been kidding in his acceptance speech - it was all too easy: the check-ins, purchases, befriending of certain names on social networks, choice of girlfriends… They were all designed to earn him the maximum points. Points meant badges, rewards, recognition, fame, wealth. He was famous for playing his life well, but he was sick and tired of playing.

As he left the awards ceremony in his shiny convertible (which had been gifted to him from a petroleum company), he made a decision. He wasn’t going to play his life any more, but live it. He didn’t know what that meant, but it was definitely not by winning points. Maybe he would go off somewhere quiet, like Thoreau in Walden, live in harmony with nature and grow his own vegetables.

But that’d be boring, wouldn’t it?

He really didn’t know what to do. The only thing he knew was that he would no longer do anything that would earn him points. He would not buy anything unless necessary, he would not work, he would not participate in any Rewarded Social Activity, he would not play the dating game. He wanted to remember what it was to feel alive, to make choices that didn’t already have a predetermined set of outcomes. To exist outside the game – yeah!

He went home and sent a resignation email to work. He called and told his girlfriend, who looked great in life and on paper, but whom he didn’t love and suspected didn’t love him, that it was over. He posted this message on all his social networks:

I’m not playing any games any more. Please don’t look for me. I need to find a new way to live my life. GAME OVER.

He wrote to his lawyer explaining the details. He then deactivated all his social networking accounts, shut his laptop, and walked out of his house leaving the door unlocked.

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Six months later…

John sat on the pavement, seemingly invisible to everyone. If there had been a stop motion film of the scene, he would have been the only constant as people, cars, and birds shifted and drifted all around him and the sky changed from dusky pink to blue to black. A bushy beard covered his face, dirt stained his clothes and people’s noses scrunched up in distaste when he was near, although he could not smell himself any longer.

Sometimes, he would laugh out loud and then shake his head. People walking past would glance at him and hurry on, irritated and sometimes visibly pitying the crazy tramp. But a strange, burning joy shone in his eyes, even as he stretched out his hand to beg, and this tramp walked tall.

Now that he had unplugged from the game and news and media, people and their ways had become exceedingly amusing to him: what they wore, what they ate, how they walked and talked and monitored and lived their lives on computers. Why the hell did they care so much about so many inconsequential things? He liked to make up imaginary David Attenborough-style commentaries about his fellow men in their natural environments:

“Watch this female browsing footwear at this retail outlet. These shoes are incredibly impractical to walk in but will hopefully signify to other females that she has thoroughly studied the latest edition of Vogue, a kind of a holy scripture for clothes worship.”

“Watch this tired young male in an ill-fitting suit, walking back to his office clutching a coffee, the skin on his face sagging prematurely. His afternoon will be spent typing in numbers and names into a meaningless spreadsheet and looking at his watch.”

“Watch this homeless and unemployed male, colloquially known as a ‘tramp’, shuffle towards the camera and stretch out his hand in a gesture of greeting…”

Here, John’s reverie was broken by an outstretched hand in his face. He took in the other man’s dirty, threadbare clothes, a ratty backpack with a sleeping bag poking out of it, and the unmistakable stench of someone who hadn’t showered for days.

“Hey, mate. You sit here every day for hours, just staring at people. I’ve been watching you. What’s your story? Where’ve you come from?” His voice was surprisingly cheery.

“Erm, I’m just people-watching, really,” stammered John, who hadn’t spoken to anyone for a good part of three months now. “They’re quite predictable, really. Everyone wants more money, more love, more recognition.”

“Everyone wants to be a winner!” said the tramp, matter-of-factly.

“Not me. I’m sick of games”

“Sure you do. You’re just saying that ‘cause you know you can’t win. Pre-emptive losing so you don’t even have to bother.”

“That’s really not me,” said John, with a smile.

“Mind if I sit down for a bit?” asked the other tramp, already sitting down.

And so the two began talking. Tom had become homeless when his wife divorced him and took his house and kids. He had then become depressed, took to drinking, and lost his job. It had all happened in the space of 6 months and now he’d been homeless for 2 years. He’d managed to stop drinking and now wanted to find a job, but it was impossible to get one when he didn’t have an address and he looked and smelled the way he did.

John told him that he used to be really into the game, but that he had decided to not play any more. “I was only playing just to have something to do with my life, and just to get the discount coupons and prizes and kudos. It wasn’t making me happy.”

“Yeah, excuses, excuses. Look at you now. You dream of living like the people you see, having a nice place to live in, having a respectful job, a nice girlfriend. If you were at the top of the game, if you were John Clay, you wouldn’t have thrown it all away, would you?”

John couldn’t help laughing at this point.

“I am John Clay,” he told Tom.

“Shut the fuck up!” Tom laughed.

“You don’t have to believe me,” said John.

“Seriously? You’re John fuckin’ Clay?”

“Yes, I am,” said John, laughing delightfully at the absurdity of the situation.

“Prove it,” said Tom.

“I don’t need to prove anything,” John shrugged.

“You’re full of shit,” Tom said disgustedly, and left.

John laughed some more on his own. He could see people looking at him and shaking their heads with pity, and this made him laugh even harder until tears were coming out of his eyes and his belly hurt.

Suddenly, camera flashes were going off all around him. Throngs of people all around him were chanting his name.

“John Clay, is that you? Oh my god, it is!”

A young female reporter had thrust a mic in his face. A cameraman hovered behind her, the red recording light on the camera bouncing around as he was pushed and pulled by the crowd.

“John, why are you dressed like a tramp? Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were? Why did you stop playing the game?”

Questions were being speared at him from all directions. John knew that he couldn’t escape now.

“I told you, I don’t want to play the game any more,” he said, resignedly. “All these points, prizes, leaderboards… they don’t mean anything. I’m going to live my life, not play it away to someone else’s rules.”

“Were you aware that there is a new game that everyone’s playing now?”

“What game is that?”

“Your rules, your new rules! You get points when you get rid of things. Brands reward you for not buying other brands’ stuff. It’s the Anti-Game. It’s genius!”

John didn’t know how to respond, but felt that he had to cut off a part of himself and give it away just so that they would leave him alone.

“Yes, you figured it out. My new game, the anti-game,” he said, flashing his old fetching smile. “Who’s winning?”

“You, of course!” exclaimed the interviewer.

A wild cheer erupted around him. He felt the old pang of excitement grip his heart, but his heart felt empty.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

LIFE OVER.

Gamification of Life

2010-12-03T10:54:00.014Z

'Gamification' – defined as the building of game mechanics into a website or service as a way to increase user engagement – is a trendy topic. But many companies and services have been using it for years, intentionally or not, and no wonder - building game mechanics into a service can make it more fun, compelling and addictive.

Check-in services like Foursquare and GoMiso allow users to earn badges and points for doing things they would normally do anyway, like being at work and watching TV shows, and makes the experience social. However, so-called ‘serious games’ are now being designed “for purposes beyond pure entertainment – for example to promote social change, as a teaching tool, to encourage healthier living, for technical training, or to market a product.”

This means game mechanics can be used for good, but it could also be used for social engineering and to manipulate people into certain behaviours at work, in schools, supermarkets… basically, everywhere. Such application of game mechanics to our day-to-day life and experiences have fundamental ethical implications.

In any game, there’s an implicit built-in morality system: What is good? What is bad? Who defines this and for what purpose? Can you cheat? Do you get rewarded or punished for cheating? What is the end goal? What do you win or lose? Gamified apps and services may be sponsored by a corporate or other organisation that has its own motives. They could then determine the correct answers to the above questions in the game design to manipulate people into behaving in a certain way. This may be acceptable in a virtual game, but what implications does it have when game-play is manifested in real life? Will players think about the above questions before they start playing a game, or simply play because all their Facebook friends are playing?

In a sense, gamification is merely an extension of points systems we already use covertly and overtly in life, i.e. money, titles, and recognition. Most people play the money game, the career game and the love game. But people choose to play different versions of the games depending on their ethics and values. E.g. In the love game, for one person, winning may be sleeping with the most number of people you can. For another, to marry their soul mate is the ultimate win. In the career game, for one person, winning may be getting the six-figure salary job. For another, being happy and fulfilled is winning, even if the pay isn’t great.

People play several different games at once too. They can play all three games mentioned above (money, career, love) at once. And which versions of the games you decide to play and how you play them will determine how well you will do in the ultimate game, the game of life. (Sorry about the cheesy phrase. Incidentally, one of my favourite board games as a kid.) :)

Of course, the game of life is just an analogy. People simply live: they love, they work, they play, they die. But with the ubiquity of social networks, how well you do in the ‘game of life’ becomes increasingly public, feeding into the game mechanics of comparison, bragging rights, exchanges, point-scoring, and competition. The gamification trend taps into the very human qualities of oneupmanship and aspiration, but as writer Margaret Robertson has pointed out, simply applying elements of gaming (such as competition, scores, rules, collection and interaction) to an activity doesn’t turn it into a game:

“What we're currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience. Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards. Gamification, as it stands, should actually be called pointsification, and is a bad thing because it's a misleading title for a misunderstood process… Games are good, points are good, but games ≠ points."

In other words, gamified applications should not become “glorified report cards that turn games into work rather than life into play, and users into pawns rather than players." - Alex Fleetwood, founder of Hide&Seek.

Many happiness experts have identified being in the moment and in the flow as the key to happiness, not monetary or career success. When winning points/badges/public displays of success become the focus of an activity, rather than the activity itself, aren’t we missing the point of living? Life isn’t all about winning or losing. Before we start playing any game, we must question the morality and intent behind the game and whether we actually want to/should play.

Don't get me wrong, I think gamification is an exciting area to be looking at, as it can reveal so much about our collective psychology, sociology and creativity, and gamified services and apps can be fun. All I'm saying is that we should think about the ethics and motives behind any game that overlaps into 'real life'.

Play ≠ game ≠ gamification. You can still have fun just playing, without playing a game.

4 Ethically Questionable Advertising Practices You Should Think About

2010-11-15T23:07:00.003Z

Disclaimer: this post isn’t strictly about future ethics, but it’s a subject that I feel passionate about so I’ve written a post. Hope you still enjoy it :)

Can you imagine a world without adverts? Personally, I find it quite hard to do so as advertising is omnipresent in our lives: on billboards, on websites we visit, on TV, radio, email, magazines, music-streaming services, in films, in texts we receive on our phones… What's more, advertisers are constantly finding new ways of advertising to us using new technologies and platforms. This video of a dystopian ad-filled future may seem unlikely, but all the more scary because it's not so implausible:

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Ads are ubiquitous because they fund a lot of our day-to-day activities, such as search, email and social networking. They also pay for commercial TV, radio and web content. But that doesn’t mean we’re getting these things for free. Every time an advertiser pays for something in cash on our behalf, we pay them back with our data and attention. And often, consumers are not given any choice in whether to pay in cash or data/attention. Fair enough, you might say. The content providers decide on the terms of payment. But what if you don’t want to pay with your data or attention? What alternatives are there? Not much.

Here’s an exploration of that and some other ethically questionable advertising practices:

1) Robbing people of time

We’ve all heard the saying ‘time is money.’ That really is the case when it comes to advertising. We may not pay with money for content, but we pay with our time, the most precious commodity we have. Once a moment passes, we can never get it back. Do you really want to spend any of those precious moments of your life looking at ads that are trying to sell you things that you probably don’t need, and probably would never want to buy anyway?

Even more annoying are pop-up ads and banner ads on the web that interrupt my navigation and force me to watch or close an ad window before I can continue. I realise that some people would rather pay with their time and attention than with cash, and some people may even like ads. But there should be a choice for people who would rather pay with cash for content and services, as with Tivo, Spotify Premium or DVD boxsets.

Some may argue that we should pay by the content provider’s preferred method, whether it’s with cash or time. But I believe badly designed and badly targeted ads are not just annoying and obnoxious, but unethical because they rob me of my most precious commodity: time.

One way for advertisers to get around this problem may be to make sure all ads are highly targeted and relevant, i.e. only serve people ads when they have expressed an intent for purchase, whether by entering in a search term or having signed up to an ads service.

2) False promises

A pretty basic ethical standard for ads is to tell the truth. And not lie, or exaggerate. Regulating bodies like the ASA and FSA oversee ads in the UK to ensure they don’t make misleading claims, lie or hide the truth.

However, many ads imply untruths, rather than obviously lie. For example, a perfume ad often shows a beautiful female model who has a thrilling, passionate, semi-nude encounter with a gorgeous male model. The ad implies that a whiff of the perfume will somehow make the wearer beautiful and desirable like the model, and bring some of the romance, intrigue and – yes – sex into the wearer’s life.

Logically, people know that a bottle of perfume cannot do this. But hey presto, the brand association has been made. By showing ‘aspirational’ images of people or things, they create an emotional need and falsely associate the product as the fulfilment solution to that need in people’s minds.

As Don Draper from Mad Men points out in the acclaimed Carousel scene, advertisers aim to create “a deeper emotional bond” with consumers, because they realise that visceral, emotional responses often override rational considerations such as price or suitability.

But aren’t such superficially created brand associations unethical, because often, the products cannot deliver on such implied promise?

It gets worse when brands try to associate their products with sentiments like ‘happiness’ as Coca-Cola has been doing for a while. Coke contains a lot of sugar, so it will give you a ‘sugar rush’ when you drink it. Coke calls this feeling ‘happiness’, and often shows groups of people sharing in the ‘happiness’ of drinking Coke in their ads. Here, Coke is redefining ‘happiness’ as something you can buy in a bottle, specifically, their bottle. It exploits people’s desire to share and belong, even though in reality, it’s just a short energy burst created by an unhealthy dose of sugar. Sneaky, and inaccurate in a 1984 DoubleSpeak sort of way.

3) Product Placement

Product placement refers to the placement of branded goods or services inside content usually devoid of adverts, such as feature films and TV shows.

British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing states:

“Marketers, publishers and owners of other media should ensure that marketing communications are designed and presented in such a way that it is clear that they are marketing communications.” (Section 22.1)

(On a side note, Ofcom has now published a series of proposals for the introduction of product placement on UK TV shows.)

Advocates of product placement argue that product placement provides funding for content creation and allows more people to make films/TV shows. But on the flipside, content that doesn’t align with corporate interests will not be made or shown. The tone of the content would probably be altered to suit the marketing message. Even story lines may be altered to prominently include products.

Product placement is unethical because the power of funding gives advertisers excessive influence over media content. Stories and images that are critical of specific advertisers, as well as advertising and commercialism generally, may be rarely, if ever, funded. It would stifle variety and freedom of expression, as advertisers prefer media content that is light, non-disturbing, and with an emphasis on happy endings. It's undemocratic.

Furthermore, with multinational conglomerates owning many different brands under an umbrella company, consumers won’t always be able to realise that they’re being advertised at - even more sneaky!

4) Ads that promote consumerism and waste

One of the biggest ethical criticisms for advertising is that they are designed to make you want and buy things you don’t need, thus promoting consumerism and waste. However, this presupposes that wanting things you don’t need is bad. Is it?

Wouldn’t life be rather bereft if we only lived with things we need for essential survival? How about things like art, culture, good food, wine, and music? We probably don’t need 90% of the things we own, but I don’t think there's anything wrong with ownership per se. We need many different levels of fulfilment, and I think it’s good to enjoy ourselves and buy things that would help us fulfill some of our higher needs in Maslow’s hierarchy (image below). I think it’s ok to buy things for pure pleasure, as long as you’re not buying things to bolster your self-identity and self- worth which would only have a temporary effect.

However, this is a controversial view and there seems to be a backlash around consumerism at the moment, with social movements like 100 thing challenge and Compact gaining traction.

Research shows that buying and owning things only gives you temporary happiness and that experiences give you longer-lasting happiness than things, and I agree. However, I don’t believe in asceticism as a necessary route to happiness and morality.

Conclusion

So what makes an ethically good ad?

1) It's useful and relevant to you.
2) It's served in a way that does not intrude upon your time without your permission.
3) It does not make false promises, even in an implied way.
4) It does not try to make you feel inadequate to make you buy their product or service.
5) There is a clear distinction between advertising and content.

We, as consumers, should fight for our right to choose which kind of adverts we are exposed to daily, and the right to choose what kind of marketing activities we participate in. This means having the choice to pay with cash or attention/time, and being able to know when we're being advertised at. It means understanding the mechanics and psychology behind ads that try to sell us much more than they can deliver by creating brand associations in our minds.

After all, we are talking about what would add up to hundreds of hours of our lives, and those are the hours that we will never get back.

The Ethics of Designer Babies

2010-10-25T16:54:00.005+01:00

I recently spent a day with married friends and their beautiful one-year-old girl, Lily. Lily smiled, giggled and ooh-ed at everything and everyone around her. She was simply delighted to be there, in that non-descript café-bar on the South Bank on a grey London afternoon. When she cracked one of those gorgeous sunny smiles at you, it wasn’t for any other reason but because she was there, now and she was very pleased about it, and you couldn’t help but feel pleased yourself.

Lily is the perfect baby. Cute, pretty, smiley, well-behaved, fun, smart. If people could choose to design their babies, they would make her like Lily. Currently, our knowledge of genetics is not enough to select much more than gender or eliminate certain diseases, but advances in genetics in the future will probably make it possible for parents to ‘design’ their babies while they are still embryos, i.e. select the gender, hair colour, personality, IQ, and eliminate any diseases and ‘negative’ traits such as anti-social tendencies. Would it be a problem for you if Lily, in all her perfection, had been genetically modified?

Richard Dawkins has suggested that through evolution, certain traits get more and more specialized, but not necessarily better. This is because natural selection relies on random mutations of genes that enhance certain traits and thus help that individual to reproduce and pass on his or her genes. Over millenia, those traits that are most helpful to the propagation of the species will become more widespread. But now, advances in genetics mean we don’t have to rely on evolution. We can choose the genes that we wish to pass onto our immediate future generations and bypass the genetic lottery.

Understandably, many debates rage around the ethics of ‘designer babies.’ Does the foetus have the right to not be genetically modified, or do parents own the right to change its genetic code to have the kind of child they want? Would the ‘advantages’ the parents endow upon the foetus in fact stop the child from experiencing character-building trials and make the child feel superior to its non-genetically modified peers? What if the child could be genetically engineered to be modest and kind as well as superior in intelligence, appearance and ability?

Many people feel uncomfortable with ‘playing God’ or being able to change someone else’s destiny. But don’t parents shape the child mentally, emotionally and physically after birth anyway through upbringing and the environment they provide for the child? Also, throughout history, humans have been selecting the traits that they want in their children by selecting their mates. Why not give the child a head start with a little help from available science?

One could argue that everything we do to develop ourselves is ‘enhancement’ of our natural state, whether it’s learning an instrument, foreign language, or social skills. On the physical side, parents paying for orthodontics and even breast enhancements for their children are accepted by society, so why not enhance the more fundamental and arguably more important aspects of our children like intelligence or memory before birth?

A frightening scenario often invoked by critics of ‘designer babies’ is that because genetic technologies are currently very expensive, only the wealthy may be able to afford to ‘enhance’ their babies in this way, leading to inequality and a tiered society.

But if cost wasn’t a factor, would you have a ‘designer baby’?

Today's story:

Another day, yet another designed person found dead.

This one had been a renowned actress, designed to be beautiful, charismatic and with enhanced memory for learning lines. After a distinguished career spanning over 20 years, she had been found dead on the floor of her Chelsea flat, her eyes wide open in shock and sheer terror. Three neat bullet holes gaped in the alabaster skin of her chest, underneath the silk Hermes scarf tied around her long neck. A bottle of champagne had apparently been opened just before the attack and sat on the coffee table next to her body. It had gone all flat now.

Irene surveyed the scene with cool detachment. Her emotion levels had been toned down so it wouldn't interfere with logical reasoning, while her empathy levels had been cranked up so she could easily put herself in the minds of the criminals she was chasing. Her analysis, memory, and observational qualities were as finely tuned as a Stradivarius. With her lithe frame, girl-next-door face and long blonde hair usually worn in a high ponytail, she was attractive enough to be able to flirt a man out of information while disarming enough to not put people off, as some designed people did with their eerie perfection.

In other words, she had been designed for this. She had been designed to be a top criminal investigator.

But right now, she was stuck. Four murders in four days. Doctor, politician, scientist, actress. Every single one of them a high-profile, successful designed person. Every single one of them clean, with absolutely no forensic evidence left behind. They were perfect murders, elegantly executed.

The media was playing it up, speculating that the murders were probably committed by an anti-designed-people fanatic. There had indeed been intermittent violent incidents in the city against designed people. A man had attacked a designed person who had been offered a job instead of him, a jealous ex-lover had threatened a designed woman who had “stolen” her fiancé. But Genetic Equality Network (GEN), one of the more prominent and direct-action anti-designed people groups, had denied responsibility, and there were absolutely no clues around the murders. Besides, most people seemed mollified after the Equal Opportunity Law that had passed recently that had stipulated non-designed people quotas for businesses.

So basically, Irene didn’t have any other evidence than the five dead bodies with bullets in them. She was also aware that, as a well-known criminal investigator who had written best-selling books on criminal psychology and often appeared on TV shows, she could very well be the next target. She tried to push the nagging thought to the back of her mind. The last five days had been like a bad film she was forced to watch to the end. I need to relax a bit, she thought.

She decided to walk home to clear her head, instead of taking the tube. It had started to drizzle, but the raindrops felt like cool little hands wiping away the last few days’ intensity from her mind. She got into a rhythmic stride, walking in time to the pitter-patter of rain around her.

Suddenly, she became aware of a feeling that she was being watched. She sneaked a look behind her, but no-one was there.

Irene kept walking, looking around uneasily. Maybe she should’ve taken the tube after all. You’re just being silly, there’s nothing there, she told herself. She was almost home now anyway, her flat was just round the corner. She walked fast, desperately hoping someone would come out onto the street, but no-one did and all the curtains were drawn in the windows.

Just as she reached her door and turned the key, she felt someone press something cold and hard into the small of her back.

“Don’t say anything. Go into your flat,” hissed the low female voice.

Irene’s heart was pumping like it was about to burst, but she somehow managed to open the door and walk into her flat with the gun still pressed against her back. I need to engage with her, keep her talking, thought Irene, knowing she had to keep calm although the first overwhelming instinct was to scream and run.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Her voice came out clear and unwavering, although she was feeling anything but. She could do this. She was designed to deal with criminals.

The person behind her laughed a tinkly laughter that sounded weirdly familiar. “Don’t you recognise my voice?” she said. “Turn around, take a look.”

Irene turned around slowly, dreading what she would see. She gasped. Standing there was Irene, herself. This is not possible, thought Irene. But there she was, another Irene, wearing a different outfit, but still unmistakably her.

“We were made from the same design,” laughed the other version of herself, as if reading Irene’s thoughts. “Except I was switched with a non-designed baby straight after birth. It was meant to be a ‘social experiment.’ Thanks to our biological mother who agreed to give us up so she could pursue her acting career. I had to grow up just like standard people, with standard education, standard treatment. Equal Opportunity? What a load of rubbish.”

She paused there, overcome by bitter emotion. “I’d always known that I was different from the standard kids. I was better, at everything. I’d been designed to be a criminal investigator like you. So using the skills I was designed for, I tracked down the scientist who created the experiment, the politician who signed it off, the Doctor who delivered us and the woman, our mother, who decided to put her career before us, her children.”

Irene couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was too much information all at once. But the other her was right there in front of her, so it had to be true.

“What are you hoping to achieve? Killing all these people doesn’t change anything!” said Irene, desperate.

“Really? It changes rather a lot, actually.”

With that, the other Irene fired the pistol. There was no sound, but Irene felt a hit on her chest. She fell to the ground with a scream. Two more shots followed. They were nothing like those slow-motion bullets that gracefully glide through the air in movies. They were instant, brutal, and there was nothing poetic about them at all.

The other Irene leaned over the dead Irene, and checked her pulse and breathing.

Just then, Irene’s phone began to vibrate. The new Irene picked it up after a second of hesitation.

“Hi, this is Irene,” she answered, smoothly.

The Elephant in the (Private) Room: Google, Facebook and Privacy

2010-09-22T12:14:00.009+01:00

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
- Edward P. Morgan, American journalist and writer

Now replace ‘a book’ with Google in that quote.

It’s kinda true. With the proliferation of social networks and constant connectivity, it is not often that we can do anything online these days without bumping into other people. Which is not a bad thing and often reaps interesting and stimulating rewards in forms of rich conversations and lolz. But sometimes it’s nice to be able to put our feet up and have the proverbial house to ourselves, where we can do anything we want without the fear of being judged or watched by other people. Most people believe Google is that space.

Think about everything you’ve Googled in the last three days, last three months, last three years. Can't remember it all? You can check on Google History. Think about not only what you’ve Googled, but all the Gmail messages you’ve sent and received, all the directions you’ve searched for on Google maps, all the documents you’ve saved onto Google Docs, all the events in your Google Calendar.

Google has access to all that. If you use the aforementioned Google products, they have a pretty clear picture of who you are as a person: your goals and aspirations, interests, habits, places you frequent, your correspondence, your deepest and the most fleeting desires. It has a pretty clear idea of you at any given point in your life, as they show in their own ad:

Luckily, Google products have privacy built into their functionality. Sharing is opt-in. When Google made an exception with Buzz and made it opt-out on launch, the resulting outcry made Google quickly apologise and change it back to opt-in. They still had to pay $8.5 million to settle a class action privacy lawsuit though.

Given enough raw data, today’s algorithms and powerful computers can reveal new insights that would previously have remained hidden. With our increasing dependence on cloud computing services, such as Google Apps, our digital nomad lifestyles and services like Google Voice, Google will know ever more about us - perhaps have insights about us that even we didn’t realise.

Of course, most people trust Google not to use this information against them. We know that Google’s aim is to serve ads that are based on what we search for, and the better Google does its job, the better it is for all parties involved – we get what we were searching for, the advertiser makes a sale, Google makes money from our click on these ads. It’s all done by clever algorithms – we know there isn’t a real person at a Google office scrutinising our every move, connecting us to our links like the telephone operators of old. (And to be honest, if they did, how interesting would it be for them?)

It is the age of Big Data - companies are trying to capture, analyse and manipulate as much data about us as possible because they can then use that information to create a context for selling us stuff, whether that ‘stuff’ is actual goods, information or simply getting our buy-in. We are not just random ‘consumers’ any more – they know our age, location, our plans and desires in a given place and time framework simply by observing us online. Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, recently said,

"The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians… The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it."

There are fewer companies in a better position for this than Google or Facebook.

Wired UK editor David Rowan recently published an article entitled Six Reasons why I'm not on Facebook. In this blog post about Rowan's article, Dan Biddle remarked how we baulk at Facebook having access to our data while forgiving or ignoring other online and offline companies that have equal or greater access to information about us.

As I commented on his post, I think this reaction to Facebook is partly because Facebook is seen as a vehicle for exhibitionism and voyeurism (the flipside of sharing and connecting). Some people think the use of Facebook and other social networks detract from face-to-face relationships and productivity. I find (and I’m not alone in this) Facebook to be also strangely addictive, because it fuels our basic human drivers of exhibitionism, voyeurism and stimulation. It doesn't help Facebook's cause that Zuckerberg himself has openly declared that the world has become more public and less private.

But as I pointed out above, Google knows far more about our inner-most desires and needs than Facebook does because it knows what we search for and click on in private, not what we broadcast to the world and to our friends.

The difference between Google and Facebook is that Facebook openly monetises on human relationships and connections, using what we willingly share with others to serve us ads, while Google serves us ads by observing our private actions. Facebook encourages us to become ‘brand ambassadors’ – everything we Like on Facebook effectively makes us billboards for that brand/activity. Sharing is opt-out.

The brand Pages, Likes and the Social Graph ensure that on Facebook, the online representations of us become an amalgamation of brands/activities that we Like, all trackable by Facebook and their third party partners. I think many people instinctively rebel against this duplicity/hi-jacking of self even whilst enjoying it, hence the big outcry against Facebook privacy settings.

Google (at least for now) lets us be ourselves, helps us find the things we want without social pressures and quietly observes what we do.

Sounds harmless but potentially very scary.

When does Artificial Intelligence begin to have rights?

2010-09-03T09:18:00.007+01:00

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These are the Three Laws of Robotics written by Isaac Asimov in 1942. Clearly, robots are a lesser standard of beings than humans in his stories. i.e. their raison d'être is to serve humans. This is acceptable for functional robots designed to work and do chores for us, but researchers and games developers are also building robots and virtual characters with emotional intelligence, like Nao and Mylo. These new types of artificial intelligence can learn from their environment and will respond emotionally and spontaneously, although they are still at very early stages of development at the moment. So at what point do these robots/virtual characters begin to have rights?

In 2007, the South Korean government announced that a team of experts will draw up a Robot Ethics Charter, which would cover standards for users and manufacturers to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa. Park Hye-Young of the Ministry of Information and Communication’s robot team said at the time that key considerations would include ensuring human control over robots, protecting data acquired by robots and preventing illegal use. Nothing seems to have come of it, but these are issues that we will definitely need to consider as robotics and artificial intelligence advance and become increasingly integral part of our lives.

It is generally considered wrong and unkind to inflict gratuitous suffering on any other sentient being, even if they are not human, but that doesn’t mean the object of our considerations have equal rights to us humans. ‘Rights’ are granted as part of a social contract. With rights come social duties and moral responsibilities. Could artificial intelligence enter into a ‘social contract’ with us, and if so, at what point can we decide they are capable enough to do so? And at what point do we consider them equal to us, if ever?

A lot of our moral systems and the concept of human rights are built around The Golden Rule, which basically says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But for this rule to work, ‘you’ and ‘others’ need to have a shared basis of experience and expectations of what is good and bad. The rule would not work if the two parties had different ideas of what they would have done unto them. Could we ever have this common basis of understanding with artificial intelligence? And if not, do we need to come up with a new ‘Golden Rule’ to accommodate the treatment of artificial intelligence and vice versa?

For this reason, it seems to me that the ability to understand and feel human emotions on the part of the artificial intelligence, not just the ability to think, should be considered in order to design intelligence with a morality. Not just any morality, but a morality that is pretty similar to the human sense of morality. Different people have different senses of morality and what is right and wrong, but Asimov’s first law seems like a pretty good place to start. But with an added caveat:

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, whether that harm is emotional or physical. Equally, a human being may not injure a robot or, through inaction, allow a robot to come to harm, whether that harm is emotional or physical.

By robot, I mean any human-designed being (not a "thing") with an emotional and moral intelligence.

Of course, this is all a terribly human and subjective perspective. I look forward to responses from all emotionally and morally intelligent beings out there, whether they are human or non-human ;-)

Hope you enjoy today's story:

BX04 wanted to be an aeroplane when it grew up.

Every day, it stared longingly at the sky through the kitchen window, watching the planes leisurely streaking across the sky, leaving cool white contrails behind. Oh what it wouldn’t give to have a sleek body that sparkled in the sunlight, to be able to zoom through the air to the exotic land of Dubai.

But instead, BX04 made and toasted bread.

BX04 was a hybrid breadmaker and toaster. Every morning when it received the signal from Andy’s alarm clock that Andy had gotten up, it turned off the heat, sliced the bread that had risen inside it and toasted four pieces just the way Andy liked them. When Andy walked into the kitchen, it popped out the toasted bread for Andy.

BX04 was aware that it was just a ‘thing’ in the Internet of Things. Every day, it did its duty of making delicious and nutritious bread for Andy on time, and sent the data to Andy’s online diet log. It also sent the amount of flour and yeast it had used to Andy’s food shopping log so that they would be automatically reordered when Andy ran out. It sent the amount of electricity it was using to the other appliances in the house so they could adjust their performances accordingly. In other words, BX04 was a good, responsible breadmaker and a good team-player.

But BX04 was not happy. It did not know when, how or why it got the ability to think about things other than making bread, because it really didn’t need to. BX04 wondered about this often. Maybe there had been a mistake while it was being manufactured and some chip for a more intelligent machine had been inserted into BX04 by accident. Or maybe it was an experiment by some artificial intelligence researchers, or a cruel joke by an employee at the factory where it was made. But whatever the reason, BX04 felt like it was trapped in the body of a breadmaker, when it should have been an aeroplane.

It was boring being a breadmaker. BX04 wanted to be an aeroplane so it could fly to Dubai, which it had seen on a travel show on Andy’s TV. The fantastically shaped buildings that pierced the sky and the pleasant geometric shapes that dotted the blue sea made BX04 feel happy. That was where BX04 belonged, it felt. If it could fly, it could go there, or maybe get Andy to take it there. BX04 decided to do something about it.

The next morning, Andy took out a piece of toasted bread from BX04 to find a picture of an aeroplane toasted on it.

“What the…?”

Andy picked up the toast and turned it over, then stared at BX04. He took out another piece of toast. This one had the picture of a tall skyscraper on it, which looked like lightening streaking up into the sky. The next piece of toast had the picture of what looked like a palm tree with a circle around it, and the final piece of toast had a map of the world burned into it.

Andy stared at the pieces of bread then began looking around with half a smile on his face.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” he called out. “Hello? Whoever did this?”

BX04 wanted to shout out, “No, it’s not a joke. It’s me. Take me to that place on an aeroplane!”   But of course, it had no way of doing so.

Andy now had a big goofy grin on his face. He took out his phone, pointed it at the pieces of toast and BX04 and began to take photos.

By the end of the week, BX04 was an internet star. Everybody was talking about the breadmaker that kept imprinting pictures of aeroplanes and Dubai landmarks onto its bread. Most people thought it was some kind of a viral marketing stunt by the Dubai tourism board or the breadmaker company or some such. Andy kept bringing excited friends round who ooh-ed and aah-ed at the burned-in images of the Palm, the World and Burj khalifa on BX04’s toasts/messages.

BX04 realised that he would never get through to Andy. He stopped sending out messages on its bread and went back to quietly doing its duty, fulfilling the purpose it was designed for, although it was in no sense fulfilling.

If you search for “Dubai Toast” online, you can still find images of BX04’s desperate failed attempts at communication with us humans.

Can technology be inherently good or evil?

2010-08-19T09:30:00.013+01:00

Last week, I had a long drunken pub discussion type conversation over Twitter (as far as was possible in smatterings of 140 characters!) with BBC colleagues Paul and Michael. It all started when Paul tweeted some quotes from Marshall McLuhan:

This got us talking about the morality of technology. Michael was of the opinion that yes, technology could be intrinsically evil when used to do evil. I was of the view that like Wallace's 'Techno Trousers' in Nick Park's brilliant animated short Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers, technology was completely neutral. Gromit used it to paint the ceiling in his house, the Penguin used it to rob a bank. Only the good/evil intentions of the user decided how the Techno Trousers were used – the trousers were merely an inanimate, amoral tool.

“How about a nuclear weapon, or a gas chamber?” Michael challenged me.

“Nuclear/gas pressure technology can be/are used for good. Only evil intentions created weapons/killing apparatus.” I replied.

For me, it boiled down to an ontological question: can something be good or evil without free will? My answer was no. Until technology attains true artificial intelligence with the ability to make independent moral judgments (Hello, Skynet!), I didn’t think we could ascribe moral responsibility to it. But Michael then said (over several tweets), “I think technology is always an attempt to extend human capabilities. Which capabilities we choose to extend & therefore which technology choices we pursue reflects deeply on human motivations and motivations reflect ethics. So probably true that a technology cannot intrinsically be good / bad it's soaked in enough human desire that it's imbued with good / bad. Or technologists shouldn't attempt to sidestep ethics with the usual 'i just made this, i don't choose how it's used' malarkey.” And I must say, this made sense to me.

The idea of technology being an extension of human capabilities is not new. McLuhan explored the idea in 1964. As early as 1877, the German philosopher Ernst Kapp published his “organ projection theory,” which stated that technology was in essence an extension of human (organic) corporeal apparatus. He argued that the tools or technical apparatus that humans create “operate as unconscious projections of the sensorimotor apparatus, and it is through various kinds of technological extensions and augmentations of gestures and organs that human beings constantly model, replicate and recreate themselves in the course of evolution." So a camera could be an extension of the human eye apparatus, a microphone could be an extension of the vocal apparatus, etc., and the technogical environment in turn shapes us.

Indeed, scientists have claimed that “the brain works like the internet.” But mightn’t it be because the internet was built by the brain to extend and augment the brain in all sorts of ways that it mimics the brain? McLuhan famously pointed out that “the medium is the message.” According to him, it is not the content but the medium itself that defines what we do/say/think. When the internet was built in the 1960's, it was conceived as a way to pass information between disjointed limited network points. 50 years later, the way the web has developed goes way beyond anything that the original creators of the internet imagined, in the way it enables us to create content, share and interact with each other. The original creators (many different groups over the years) also couldn’t have known the extent to which it gives us the ability to steal and snoop on each other, and the way it's made some of us far less engaged in real life friendships and relationships.

We shape technology to extend our capabilities, but technology in turn shapes us and the way we live and communicate. It’s a symbiotic relationship. To borrow Michael Smethurst’s words, the web has developed into the ethical layer on top of the internet, which are, essentially, just some pipes. (Read his excellent full post here.)

So, to use the internet as one example of widespread, indispensible technology in today's world, is the internet a good thing? Undeniably. Can it be used for evil purposes? Absolutely. Should the creators of the internet have not made the internet because it might be used for evil? I don’t think so. But to say that “I just made this thing, it’s not up to me how it’s used” would be a cop-out. Not having a moral stance is a moral stance in itself. Inspiringly, the ‘Father of the Internet’ Tim Berners-Lee continuously advocates openness, neutrality and universal access. Likewise, any programmer, technologist, engineer or scientist has the moral responsibility to continue to monitor their creations and to try their best to ensure that it continues to be used for good. Not just looking at the technology/website/application itself, but looking at its overall effect on society and how it’s changing people’s behaviour.

And how about for users? We also have a responsibility to use technology for good. This may be subtler than just actively not being evil (e.g. stealing or using it to spread hatred). We have a responsibility to think about how our use of technology is affecting other areas of our lives and other people's lives. Are we spending enough face-time with our families, friends, lovers? Can we be doing something else to brighten someone else’s life or improve our bodies and minds instead of mindlessly surfing social news feeds? Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing and technology is very addictive. According to a recent New York Times article, as we get more addicted, our brains use up more energy anticipating the next hit and responding to “news” with ever-increasing urgency, and it leaves our brains with less "room" for tasks at hand. Just how urgent is that email, facebook update or tweet? I love technology, social networking and online sharing as much as the next person. But it is our responsibility to make sure that we do not let technology shape our lives and of those around us for the worse.

To end, today’s story is inspired by a real news story. Hope you enjoy it:

It was a grey rainy day in April that I first noticed a little girl sitting on top of the steps on the way to my flat. She looked to be about 5 years old. Her hair was a dank bird’s nest and her clothes were tatty and wet. Her frail and thin body was shivering.

“Hey there,” I said to her with a smile.

She didn’t reply but simply stared at me with big hungry eyes.

“Do you live here, in this building?” I tried again.

She didn’t say anything.

My husband looked surprised when I walked into the flat holding her hand but after a brief explanation, soon started chatting to her in the easy way he has with kids.

“Hello, I’m Jon. What’s your name?”

She mumbled something, barely audible.

“What did you say?” Jon cupped his ear and put it right next to her mouth.

“She’s hungry,” he said.

When we placed a plate of rice and veggies in front of her, she tore into it with her bare hands as if she hadn’t eaten for days. After she’d shoved the last grains into her mouth, she laid down right next to the table and immediately fell asleep. As Jon and I looked at the small heap by the table and saw her chest heave up and down in contented sleep, we knew we had to keep her.

Within the next few days and weeks, we began to learn more and more about her. Her name was Anima. She was actually 7 years old, although she looked a good two years younger. At first, she hardly spoke. It was heart-breaking to see her so awkwardly self-conscious at an age when she should have been blissfully unaware of any real sorrow. As she began to trust us more, she began to reveal bits of precious information about her past life.

She told us that she had lived in a house in a forest with an old woman whom she called Nanna. It appeared that she had been abandoned by her parents when she was a baby and was brought up by this old woman who had taken pity on her. She had never gone to school. Where they had lived or how she came to be sitting on the steps of our building was still a mystery. We felt like we were in a treasure hunt - every little nugget of information she revealed about herself, every ounce of weight she gained, every tinkle of a laughter, gave new meaning to our empty lives. I dressed her in pretty flowery dresses and spent hours brushing her hair until it shone. She learned to use cutlery, to read and write, and I even began to teach her the piano. I’ll never forget the day she finished playing ‘Fur Elise’, turned around and said, “I love you, mummy.”

One day, as I was putting Anima to bed, stroking her hair as her big, now-shiny eyes began to droop to the sound of my bedtime story, I became aware of a strange noise in the house. I realised after a while that it wasn’t the noise but the lack of a noise that was odd to me. I got up from my computer and went to look around the flat. It was cold and dark – I had forgotten to put the heating or the lights on while I was engrossed with Anima. Then I realised that the baby wasn’t crying.

I almost gagged as the stench of unchanged nappies hit my nose when I entered the baby’s room.

She was in her cot, looking painfully emaciated. Her clothes were stained and tatty. Dried tear stains and snot covered her little face. At least she wasn’t crying now.

I reached out and touched her cheek. It was cold.

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My story is based on this news story of a South Korean couple whose baby died while they were obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima. It's an extreme case, but are we unwittingly doing that to a lesser extent with our loved ones while we live virtual lives? And how about the people who design and market those games to be as addictive as possible?

You can see the full conversation between Michael and I here (Paul's tweets are not included as they are protected.)

When Augmented Reality Becomes Reality

2010-07-27T22:57:00.014+01:00

In the film Inception, people can create dreams from their imagination and memory. There is so much detail and sensations in dreams that while you’re dreaming, you do not think you’re dreaming. (Although sometimes in my dreams, I do realise that I’m dreaming and enjoy the awareness that I’m in a dream. This can be fun. But I digress.)

Similarly, in the film The Matrix, everyone is fooled into thinking that the Matrix, a simulated reality created by machines, is actual reality. The whole story is based around Neo and other free humans trying to destroy the simulated reality of the Matrix. But what if people knew about the Matrix and opted into it, simply because the fake reality was preferable to actual reality? After all, as Cypher, the traitor in the film says in this clip, the steak in the Matrix tastes just as juicy and delicious as a steak in real life, even though he knows it’s not real.

“I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I’ve realised? Ignorance is bliss,” says Cypher. So why shouldn't we willingly choose ignorance, as Cypher did?

The question of what is reality has been vexing philosophers throughout the ages. Aristotle believed that all knowledge of reality could be derived from perceptual experience of the physical objects around us. Plato believed in a dual reality of things: a physical reality and an alternate reality of ideas existing beyond our physical sensory perceptions. Descartes conjectured that if an evil demon trapped someone’s mind in a black box and was controlling all inputs and outputs, the person would not know the difference.

Throughout our cultural and philosophical history, an emphasis has been placed on the importance and goodness of reality because we equate it with truth, and truth is generally seen as a virtue. An accurate perception of reality is a requirement in logical reasoning. But one of my favourite philosophers, Nietzsche, argues that reason is what distorts our perceptions of the world, because reason can falsify the evidence of our senses. According to him, the only ‘real’ world is the world which is apparent to our senses. To divide the world into a ‘real’ world and an ‘apparent’ world is an act of decadence, because it is to deny that what is apparent to our senses is real.

Neuroscience tells us that everything we feel and experience is purely due to motor-sensory perceptions of our nervous system and chemical reactions in our brain. We are merely billions of cells that react to stimuli every moment, constantly changing. Nothing is permanent in this sense. If I took a photograph of myself and then took another photo a second later, in that instant millions of chemical and neurological changes would have occurred in my body although I may not look that different in the two photos. When this process is happening in each one of us moment after moment, and in everything around us, can there be such a thing as an objective reality? And if there is, can any of us perceive it with our subjective neurobiological systems?

Augmented reality and virtual reality are still very crude at the moment, but watching films like The Matrix and Inception have made me wonder, what if articificial or augmented reality felt so real that our minds were unable to distinguish it from actual reality? What’s real can be compared to un-reality only insofar as you can distinguish between the two.

In my opinion, reverence of ‘the real’ is only a matter of cultural acceptance and practice. For example, in countries like Korea and China, plastic surgery is very common and there is no stigma attached to it. The virtue of beauty overcomes the virtue of being true to one’s original or initial appearance. In the future, we may likewise come to value reality less if virtual reality can be perceived to be better. It will be ‘augmented reality’ in the literal sense, but we may not even be able to tell the difference between the real and the ‘augmented’ real.

This is the notion I will explore in my story today:

If anybody had told Tom a few months ago that he would be going through with Better Life™, he would have laughed and told them where to go. But he was seventy-three years old and had decided he was too lonely and hapless to go on with nothing to look forward to.

He was booked in for surgery at noon, and he had not told anyone about it. He wanted to see Lana again for the last time, even if she wasn't real.

The surgery would be minor and would take less than an hour. The doctors would insert a microscopic chip into the part of his brain that created desire and connect it to the part that received sensory perceptions. His brain would then fill in the gaps and create an illusion of reality just like in a dream. Except it would be in waking life. He'd be able to see Lana again. Although she wouldn't be real, she would appear to be real and he wouldn't be able to see the difference.

He had had a fulfilling life, gone out and done things. He travelled round the world on his sailing boat, had taught in schools in five different countries, was briefly the regional kungfu champion and had found true love in Lana. And unlike most people, he had actually done these things, not just done them in Better Life™.

But as he got older, more and more people began to go Better. They perceived themselves getting the dream job, the dream house, the dream girl. What's the difference if you can't tell the difference, they asked. For Tom, this felt simply wrong. He didn't want to live in a world where everyone lived in their own perfect worlds. He wanted to be able to look into someone's eyes and know that they were seeing the same things he was. That's why he had started the Be Real movement. He wanted things and people to be real, not perceived to be real. There was a critical difference between the two things in his mind.

That’s what he had loved about Lana – she was not afraid to see things as they were. He loved her for always looking at the truth with unflinching courage and kindness. (And the way she looked). They had met at the first BeRealist meeting and had married a year later. As more and more of their friends converted to Better Life™ over the years, Lana could always be relied on to ridicule them with her wry remarks.

But now Lana was dead, the government had started offering Better Life™ on the NHS and Tom was the only BeRealist left of his friends. He had tried to keep himself busy but what really depressed him was the fact that the one person who had understood him, really understood him and felt the same way about things, was dead.

The fact that Lana didn’t exist anywhere in the world any more, the fact that she wasn’t walking down some street in her favourite blue sandals with one hand in her pocket and her shopping in the other, breathing the same air as him, drove him insane.

It simply felt unfair that she had been there and now she was not. He was so angry. That’s why he had decided to go for Better Life ™.

He’d thought about killing himself before but the thought that nobody would remember him scared him. It can only get better, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always do myself in. These were his last thoughts as he drifted off to sleep under the glaring lights over the operating table.

When he opened his eyes after the surgery, his overwhelming desire was to drink water. He thought he tasted water in his mouth and felt the cool liquid go down his throat but he knew he hadn’t drunk any. The doctors had warned him about this. He had to remember to eat and drink at regular intervals otherwise he could die of hunger and thirst. He saw a glass of water by his bedside and drank it.

Then he realized that Lana was standing watching him in the corner of the room.

“You bloody idiot. How could you do this to yourself?” she said.

"I only did it ‘cause I missed you," he stammered. He knew she wasn’t real but if he hadn’t held her stiff dead body in his own arms, he wouldn’t have believed it. “Look, I know it’s wrong, I know you’d hate me for it, but otherwise I would’ve gone mad. I would’ve… killed myself.”

Lana looked at him coldly.

“Don’t look at me like that… I know you’re not real but I still don’t want to upset you. Oh, this has all been a big mistake.”

Tom put his head in his hands and began to cry.

But then he heard her footsteps walking quietly towards him and felt her arms around him, embracing him. He felt her fingers stroking his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I know I shouldn’t have.”

“Shh,” she whispered. “I know.”

He looked up at her and was amazed to see that Lana’s face had become young and soft again. She held his face in her hands and smiled at him in just the way that used to melt his heart.

For the first time in a long time, he felt happy, alive.

Hacking Your Home Sweet Home

2010-07-19T21:14:00.001+01:00

Wouldn't it be great if your house or flat knew everything about you? How you take your coffee, what music you like when you're working or relaxing, what room temperature you prefer... So when you wake up, your espresso would be ready just the way you like it, your favourite radio show would be playing (but would change channel when a band you dislike came on), and the rooms would never be too hot or too cold.

Not only that, your home would act like a companion or even a friend. It would talk to you, it would share information and news with you that you may like from the internet and your social network, it might even surprise you by ordering a delivery of your favourite chocolate truffles from Paris when they go on sale. Many movies have shown this computer-friend-home hybrid, including Moon, Minority Report and 2001: Space Odyssey. Your home of the future would watch you, learn your preferences, and give you everything you need to be comfortable in it.

But what if your home could be used as a surveillance tool against you, by an official agent like the government or the FBI? Yes, that does sound very 1984 and we'd never let such a surveillance society happen... right? What if someone hacked into your home and could steal not only the physical things in your home, but everything that your home knows about you including what you do inside it?

This is the issue I'm going to explore in my story today. Hope you enjoy it:

There is one man and two women in my life.

The man is Akaki. He is my occupant. He is male, 33 years old, 6 foot 2 inches, 80 kg, blue eyes, brown hair. He likes classical music, cheese on toast, and his room temperature to be 19 degrees Celsius.

Woman #1 is Anna, Akaki’s girlfriend. It has been 96 days since the first time he brought her home. She’s been visiting me almost every day since then, sleeping with Akaki in his bed and leaving in the mornings. She is 26 years old, 5 foot 4 inches, 51 kg, green eyes, blonde hair. She doesn’t eat in the mornings, only drinks coffee, spends quite a lot of time looking in the mirror and brushing her long straight hair when she goes to the bathroom. She prefers her room temperature to be 21 degrees Celsius. I adjust between them and make it 20 degrees Celsius.

Woman #2 is Moira. 30 years old, 5 foot 6 inches, 55 kg, dark eyes, brown hair. She is the only person who can control me like Akaki, because she is a hacker and can make me do anything she wants. She lived in me for 1411.4 days while she was Akaki’s girlfriend, until she left with all her things one day and Akaki changed the security settings so that she couldn’t enter me any more.

Except she came back the next day to let me know with her elegant code that it’s okay for her to come in.

That was 99 days ago.

I am Home Sweet Home model number HSH-300, which means I have built–in cameras and microphones to observe my occupants and attend to their every need. I record their history so they can search and watch back any moment of their lives that took place inside me. I learn from observing them and recording their history what they like and dislike: sounds, smells, foods, temperatures, brightness levels. I can read their expressions to see if they are happy or sad, or just a little bit bored. I constantly adjust myself to their emotional and physical states and offer them things they might like. I can even detect and analyse chemical compositions of moisture levels in the room to maintain optimal conditions. I’m everything you would ever need or want in a home. I’m even programmed to love my occupants – although I’m not sure if what I feel is what humans would call love. I certainly have a strong desire for Akaki to be happy.

When Moira comes round, she rummages through Akaki’s things: his laundry, his toiletries, his mail. Then she demands to see Akaki’s history. I obey. I project onto the wall the video of everything Akaki has done inside me from the last time she left off, his whole history in me as I know it. She watches, sat on Akaki’s white leather sofa hugging her knees. She sometimes makes me pause and go back to a certain scene and play it over and over again. She did this with Akaki and Anna’s first kiss (first kiss in me – that’s the limit of my knowledge). Other times, Moira zooms in on Anna’s face as if to find a miniscule flaw, but there’s nothing but smooth pixels there. She lingers over every word, touch and smile between them, as they drink whiskey, dance, eat, kiss and mingle in bed. I can’t interpret her expression in those moments but think she looks more machine than human then, except for her shiny eyes.

One evening, Akaki returned home with Anna while Moira was watching their history.

“House, who’s here?” he asked me, alarmed, when he heard his own voice from the past drifting in from the lounge.

“Hello Akaki, Moira is here,” I answered.

“What? But I changed the codes.”

“She has the new codes.”

Akaki ran into the living room to see that he and Anna were projected onto the wall, movie stars of their own lives. In the history, they sat in the very place where Moira was now sitting with her back turned to them. Anna was leaning against Akaki who cuddled her from behind. As we watched, Moira zoomed in on Anna’s face. Her eyes were closed, her lips smiling. Her eyelids fluttered as if dreaming.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Akaki said, his voice about 2 decibels lower than usual.

Moira turned around.

“Oh hi, you’re home,” she said casually, as if she’d been expecting him.

“What the fuck are you doing here? You’ve hacked into my house so you can snoop on my history?”

Moira just stared at him blankly.

“Who’s she anyway?” she said finally.

Anna had followed Akaki into the room and now stood uncertainly behind him, as if to hide from Moira.

We were interrupted by the voice of Anna in Akaki’s history, saying: “House, video from the hospital.” In the history, I projected onto the wall Anna’s videos from the hospital which I was allowed to access.

It was a grainy black and white video. At first glance, it looked like a swirling, erratic circle of light. An incredible sense of vibrancy and urgency flowed from it.

“That’s the baby’s heart,” said Anna in the history, pointing at a tiny blot in the middle of the ebullient light. The blot kept appearing and disappearing, but the strong rhythmic heartbeat could be heard constantly, unmistakably. We watched Akaki place his hands on her stomach. They looked at each other full of joy, smiled, and kissed. I couldn’t understand why they were so happy but I was happy for them.

Moira stood very still. Her eyes appeared very black and her pupils were severely constricted, to about 2mm in width.

As she turned and walked rapidly towards the door, moisture fell from her eyes. Its chemical composition was mostly salt and some other substance unknown to me. Maybe it was love.

“If you ever come back, I’m calling the police!” Akaki shouted after her. “Do you hear me? Freak!”

I shut the door behind her. Akaki took Anna into his arms. “Are you alright, sweetheart?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said, but she didn’t look alright. She was shaking and her breathing was shallow.

Both Anna and Akaki looked up at their own history still playing on the walls. It was now another night and they were in bed. Their bodies looked like two white boats in a sea melting into each other.

“That’s the night we conceived,” said Akaki.

“House, stop,” said Anna.

I stopped the history and replaced it with the ‘Sound of the Indian Ocean’ audio file, which I knew they both liked.

“It’s stuffy in here,” said Anna.

I opened the windows for her. Akaki leaned out of one and looked left and right. Perhaps he was checking to see if Moira was still there. But she seemed to have gone.

“Let’s go out for a walk,” said Akaki.

“OK,” said Anna. “I need some fresh air.”

They walked out into the outside world where I could neither see nor look after them. I closed the door softly behind them and let darkness fill me inside. A faint scent of flowers from somewhere far away wafted into me through the open windows. I knew Anna would like that. I thought about what Akaki and Anna might like for dinner when they came back and checked what was in the fridge.

Just then, my sensors detected a movement at the back door. My cameras zoomed in. She was about 5 foot 6 inches, 55 kg, dark eyes, brown hair. I scanned her face and body.

“Hello, Moira,” I greeted her.

“Hello, House,” she said, softly.

Then she began to talk to me in my language.