Our Digital Future

Are you thinking digital? If you are only thinking computer when you do, then you are greatly mistaken. You need to think about everything in your life, every thing you touch that effects the way you live. It’s already happening faster than you can imagine. Your car, your phone, your television just to name a few everyday things effected by this revolution. Keep reading to learn how your whole environment will be effected in the next fifty years. You will be surprised! So don’t just think about the next generation computing device. Think about things like you whole house!

The user interfaces of these systems are not menus, mice, and keyboards but instead gesture, speech, affect, context, and movement. Their applications are not word processors and spreadsheets, but smart homes and personal assistants. Instead of making computer-interfaces for people, it is of more fundamental value to make people-interfaces for computers. (Michael A. Coen, M.I.T. Artificial intelligence Lab)

About 18 months ago I wrote a column on digital convergence that discussed the ramifications of the pace of technological change in this digital age. This is another article, assisted by Andrew Heath, one of my Baker Free Enterprise Foundation Fellows that looks at the accelerating pace of change and its marriage with nano technology and biologics to push us ever closer to the convergence of our very humanity with the machines that serve us.

The digital revolution is at the heart of the greatest change affecting mankind in a thousand years. We speak of the information age, but it is more profoundly the digital age, and now we are changing how we interact with our digital devices, the world around us and in fundamental ways blending with our digital servants in ways that raise fundamental questions regarding the definition of life.

We see it more frequently as we notice people on the street with a checker like object attached to their heads and hear of the wonders of the cochlear ear implants bringing sound to those previously denied the full wonders of our Creator’s universe. We perceive it as well when we enter a room and the lights go on, the air stirs to some hidden force, and we are instantly cooled or warmed, but these are just the beginning.

The recording and study of this field is called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and is just that. It is the study examining the way computers interact with humans, and how they can interact with human beings. Scholars of HCI specifically study how computers can be made increasingly usable and user-friendly to as many different groups of people as possible. The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University states their mission is “To create effective, usable, enjoyable experiences with technology through interdisciplinary research in engineering, design, computer science, and the behavioral and social sciences, and to understand the impact of technology on individuals, groups, and organizations.” The study of HCI is probably the broadest possible topic dealing with computers, and how they can be made more effective with people in the future. At the HCII they study many of the facets of digital interaction driving our changing relationship with our environment. These include advances in natural language understanding, gesture recognition, and speech recognition. A leader in the development of interactive environments, Michael H. Coen, is the author of the quote at the beginning of this article. Prof Coen was in charge of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab from 1996 – 2000. MIT is at the forefront in the development of “Intelligent Rooms.” He believes there will be major advances in the next 50 years as intelligent rooms become more and more commonplace. By 2000, Coen had already built two experimental intelligent rooms in Cambridge. Seizing on concepts embraced by those in the HCI field, Coen says “My starting – and I think quite uncontroversial – premise for my research is computers are not particularly useful…. [I]n terms of raising our quality of life, computers have a very far road to travel before becoming as essential as the light bulb , indoor plumbing, or pillow.” Naturally, Coen has seen computers approaching that “essential” position in our lives that he spoke of seven years ago. . Coen, temporarily lured away in 2000 from MIT by the opportunity in technology company development, was succeeded by Dr Howard E. Shrobe. In the intervening years, MIT’s research has moved deeper into application of the intelligent room/office concept to probe the ability of computers to react to commands given by body action. They also have made real inroads in computers being able to interpret facial expression and body positioning to interpret emotion and to react accordingly. Seven years is a long time in today’s world of computers. The resources available to these scientists today, especially with the dawning of sophisticated quantum computers which operate at a speed and complex simultaneous environment perception that is beyond comprehension by most users, has brought Dr. Coen’s work to a robust interactivity with its users, but it is in the field of biologic enhancement and nano technology that the greatest advances await, but not for long.

The Cochlear implant is but one digital implant. We are all familiar with pacemakers, but soon implants as small as a grain of sand will provide scanability of a patient’s medical records and will be commonplace. Additional functionality will include remote location reporting, also including real time full medical assessments. Not too far in the future, we will also be able to implant computer chips beneath the scalp that will assist brain functions. With advances in nano technology, these chips will also approach the size of a grain of sand for some of the basic assessment functions that are possible now. They will assist memory and may enhance physical function of muscular functions.

The military is also working on clothing that can react to wounds to act as a tourniquet while reporting the soldier’s condition and sufficing as an initial bandage.

As I wrote sometime back in “ To Nano or Not ,” technology is neither good nor bad in itself. It depends on how it is applied. Digital technology, especially when combined with Nano Biologics, is no exception. Our dangers are on at least two levels. As the digital tools achieve Professor Coen’s goal of fully adapting to humans, our growing dependence on them creates a risk of system failures. On a second level, the technology can be used to invade and control human choice rather than enhance it. It can be used for evil ends by unscrupulous people and must be managed to prevent that.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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