From dumb to smarter: a revolution unfolding under our eyes

There’s nothing as consequential as a dumb thing made smarter”, says Kevin Kelly author of “The Inevitable”. The power of such a statement could be easily undervalued but whether you are a clearly inclined tech determinist or a skeptic of technology, that sentence should be enough of a wakeup call. To even show us that we haven’t yet caught up is that the term “cognify” is used daily in tech-heavy spheres but is not a term in the dictionary. Any text editor will underline the verb and its derivations to indicate a grammatical mistake. That is a hint of how hard it is to change paradigms: God gave intelligence to humans; humans do not have the ability to “cognify” things. Cognition and the ability to think rationally and evolve from a state of brutishness is a gift to humanity, and humanity alone; this is a mantra we most likely have been taught at one point in life and maybe still hold some belief into but that concept is being challenged nowadays on a daily basis as the taxonomy of minds keeps growing.

I am of the belief that human-to-human communication technology has reached its apex in “form”. I may be wrong a half-century from now, but here is my point. We went from sending travelling messengers to talking drums, the printing press, telegraphs, telephones, radios, television, wireless texting, live audio visual calls all the way to having the power to broadcast live from almost any spot on this earth with devices that can fit in one’s hand. This power to broadcast information in a one-to-many framework has enabled the emergence of a whole cornucopia of citizen journalists, scientists, new jobs, untapped collaboration possibilities across many fields if not all (i.e. medicine, science, aviation…) and revolutionized our day-to-day living. In pure form, what more can man-to-man communication tech achieve? The only gap that I see is for virtual one-on-one communication to not suffice anymore pushing the need to now having holograms or some technology that makes us literally feel the presence of someone we’re communicating with, regardless of distance. Simply put, instead of sending hugs via text or saying it verbally over a VoIP, can technology ever allow us to hug someone when we are at two different locations at a singular point in time. Can we reach the point where college students on a long-distance relationship are virtually able to feel each other’s touch? Can technology ever get us there? I do not reject the possibility of such an achievement because “impossible” is not a word in the tech lexicon, but I would hold my horses. Therefore allow me to change the narrative for this essay, I will look at communication technology not from the lens of cross-human interaction but from an angle of human to cognified objects communication.

If you were not already aware, social media comments and memes should have passed on the news to you by now: “they did surgery on a grape”. What? Where? Who is they? “They”, really should be replaced by “it”; a little robot named “da Vinci Xi” is the source of this entire social media storm. Doctors are working alongside robots already and getting better at achieving minimally invasive surgeries. Is this a snippet of what we ought to expect to be common in a few years? Will my coworkers be robots? Has my job in thirty-years’ time not been created yet? In this essay, I am attempting to pursue an in-depth analysis at how beyond artificial intelligence, we will be pushed to co-habit, collaborate, learn from, and maybe be emotionally be engaged with objects we insufflated intelligence to. A scary perspective ahead or an enchanting one? The bottom line is that it’s not only coming on its way, it’s here, dormant but well present.