A TED talk titled "Alone Together" interested me so much that I read the speaker's book of the same title. The book is divided into two main sections. The first section explores robots and their implications, and the second relates to social media in a social context, particularly smart phones and websites such as Facebook.
If there's one problem I have with the book, it's that the author usually refrains from stating her opinions but usually strings facts together in a way that seems kind of biased (I feel she might as well say her opinions). For example, she may quote five people who are addicted to Facebook, but refrain from providing any commentary. These five quotes, however, are so extreme that she's already providing her perspective by choosing them.
Other than that, it's a good read.
"Her" was an excellent movie. Very few would argue otherwise. What made it great was that it addressed so many recurring issues, like love and loneliness, but framed them in a context eerily similar to real life.
This was necessary for the plot, but the main differene between the movie and real life was the operating system's sentience. And though nothing in the story would have worked without it, the most interesting point Alone Together makes in the first half is that we are now treating robots and programs as if they were sentient.
If you're in computer science, then you may be very familiar with ELIZA. If you aren't, it's an old program that had a pseudo-conversation with people based on what a psychologist would say. For example, if you state a problem, it may ask if you feel that way because of your parents, if you really feel that way at all, etc. It seemed so realistic at the time that some people almost convinced themselves that they were talking to a real person.
The book quickly moves on to modern robots. She, as a technology expert as well as a psychologist, notes that children treat robots as if they were real/sentient. This is not that surprising. What's surprising are the relationships she discovers between robots and the elderly.
One elderly man tells a robot how lonely he feels after breaking up with his wife, and that he can't make any friends at his retirement home. He eventually starts referring to the robot by his ex-wifes name. Another elderly man, though he himself is an engineer who understands how the robot works, kind of self-deceives himself and starts to frame the robot as a sentient being.
As one psychologist notes, we exist in a time of unprecedented technological changes, and are essentially using ourselves as test subjects in an experiment that no one yet knows the implications of. Yes, robots can provide important conveniences and ease our lives in countless ways. But should we be so quick to assign them social functions, knowing that they are very, very far from being sentient entities? And in a society that is becoming increasingly addicted to forms of electronic technology, are we ourselves becoming robots?
Perhaps I am just being alarmist, but I really think it's important that we ask ourselves where we are going, as we continue forward in this path.