Computers as Communicators
In Neil Frude's essay "The Intimate
Machine," the author hypothesizes about future interaction between humans
and their computers. In Frude's vision, individuals' lives become so entwined
with the increasingly sophisticated but always compliant machine that people
begin to forsake all those messy, difficult, collaborative relationships
(marriage, friendships) and opt instead to spend their lives interacting with
artificially intelligent companions that can be programmed to an owner's exact
specifications (select the shape, conversation style, accent, whatever -- this
would be a "designer" companion).
While a generation ago, most people assumed the relationship between man and
machine would become antagonistic ("Open the pod door, HAL"), today
most people are completely comfortable with technology -- some to the point
where technological contact is more comfortable than human contact (I used to
pray I wouldn't have to talk to an answering machine; now I frequently pray I
won't have to talk to a person). Even acknowledging that, however, there is
still a big gap between preferring to get a credit card update on an automated
system and wanting to marry my PDA.
That large gap is communication skills -- as a communicator, the computer is
still a highly limited non-being, and (as far as computational speed and
world-wide access have come) its ability to interact with humans is limited in
two ways: the ability to program "functional intelligence" and the
non-human metaphors we use in thinking and working with computers.