As online technologies become more and more sophisticated, the tendency for us to believe that machines could perform on their own without human intervention becomes even stronger. This is an illusion because behind every new technology are people who invent and innovate — and eventually teach other people to make tech operable.
New technology is commonly found by ordinary people and its potential users as answers to challenges. Seldom would you investigate tech advancement on the grounds of its being capable of throwing questions back at you. In fact, it would sound unnatural and probably infantile to think of new technology being introduced — to take the initiative of asking you how you could make use of them. It would always be the potential user doing the questioning first before technology could provide answers.
The user experience is built around people asking the same questions over and over: How does it feel to be using such-and-such technology? So much so that the more sophisticated technology that its creators and inventors are capable of developing the more questions we begin to ask or learn to ask. Considering the average tech user nowadays to be possessed with tremendous amounts of self-entitlement, it would not surprise you to find about how much info would be necessary to satisfy such curiosity.
[Read also: 4 Reasons Computer Scientists Will Soon Be The Only People With Jobs]
Digital automation and the illusion of flawless service
Technology has come to a point where it is now possible for anyone equipped with mobile devices to quickly access and achieve informational possession of data at such a rapid rate. Apps that could be installed in such extend the tech longevity and usability even more to a degree that people who use them enjoy their maximal benefits.
An online technology that is believed to thrive on continual access, real-time immediacy and interactive capability is also perceived to be something by its users as readily available technology that has the following characteristics:
- It is “always on”. Users generally believe that any technology that’s run online would always be readily available on a perpetual basis anytime and from anywhere. This fuels the desire for people to take the initiative to engage mobile device tech like smartphones and tablets (and the apps in them) every time they find the opportunity to do so, or while away time when there’s nothing else to do. While you might find it convenient to do so with your smartphone or tablet every time you find yourself idling away at the bus stop, train station or airport or even while in transit. However, once a WiFi connection vanishes at some point in the journey or your battery loses power somehow — you wouldn’t be able to be “always on”.
- It is capable of flawless service. Digital automation also encourages people to perceive that systems are self-run. That there is no amount of human intervention necessary for systems to perform optimally. So much so that it is not unusual to find people who perceive online phone systems to fail only when people mess around with systems or misuse them. It is the other way around, however. Systems fail when online tech breaks down or when it becomes necessary to upgrade or send them in for maintenance routine. Not all outages are caused by accidents, after all.
The above characteristics could also be wrongly perceived owing to the way tech “experts” describe them to the public.
One-way intelligence
No matter how interactive tech might be, it could only enable a one-way intelligence equation. It could teach you some things like any online tutorial would but the mastery of it is something humans could provide other humans. Tech with artificial intelligence to ask you all the right questions have yet to be developed. Until then, you would have to content yourself with Siri or Google or any other search engine out there.
[Recommended read: Technology – Are We Too Plugged in to it?]
[Image credit: Cathy, Flickr]
It’s hilarious that people deny that we were created but then they ignore the fact that all we try to do is create.
Especially ourselves.
Why are people so obsessed with creating artificial human intelligence?
I agree with your point.
Its only one way logic. The robot is not talking to you people he is reading code that some dude programmed.
Well, there are several genius and creative people who always want to explore and this is the reason why they created this kind of inventions but sometimes they don’t realize the disadvantages of all the things they created.
Hay Leslie Young,
It is a great information technology of human factor.I thinks it’s helpful for user.You continue the post and helps the user and adding more tutorial,video,text etc.
Thanks for great sharing the post.
Hi Sharron, I am very glad you liked my post. Yes, It is one of my goals in writing, to make my readers appreciate my work and for them to learn something new from it. 🙂
I don’t think a two-way intelligence equation(I hope I said it right) will ever be possible in the world of tech
All this robot technology kind of reminds me of iRobot and Terminator Rise of The Machines. Hopefully computers, robots, and machines are mostly helpful and can only do what they were programmed for. I don’t know though can they get a virus that will make them do something crazy things?
Some of the predictions and time frames they are talking about that we will see some these things is not that far off according to the news anyway.
As tech advances, it is surely possible that we could create programs that will help make a machine self aware. For example, say our DNA is like a computer program that was written by someone. This program is so advanced that all our creator had to do was write the program and rest happened on its own. The same is done by us and if we can create programs in the future, which are billion times more complex than what’s presently possible, we could create the DNA for a whole set of beings ourselves. So when you say “Tech with artificial intelligence to ask you all the right questions have yet to be developed”, it’s absolutely true, but we might see that change within our lifetime.