Abstract
While modern technological development has promised the liberation of humanity from the constraints of the natural world: disease, toil, hunger and so on, post-modern technological developments promise a new kind of liberation: the freeing of humanity from the limitations and burdens found in the social world of people. Emerging technologies such as virtual humans and sociable robots exemplify this post-modern promise. This paper aims to explore the potential unintended consequence of such technologies and question the character of the “liberation” they promise. While virtual “other” technologies are being developed under the guise of solving social problems and providing therapeutics, the full effect of their deployment will be much more profound. Developers of virtual others do not aim to create fully intelligent social actors but merely to evoke a sense of social presence. It is notable, however, how easily social presence and attachment are evoked in human beings. The difficulty does not lie in the suspension of disbelief but rather in fighting the unconscious and pre-rational urge to anthropomorphize and imagine objects as social others. As imperfect but highly seductive simulations, virtual others are instances of post-modern hyperreality. Embracing them, I argue, carries the risk of an undesirable shift in the collective conception of authentic sociality. Rather than succumbing to technological somnambulism and naively believing that virtual others can be held at the rational distance necessary to prevent any unwanted reshaping of human social interaction, one should be cautious and critical of what the post-modern promise of technology holds in store for those who pursue it.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackerman JM, Nocera CC, Bargh JA (2010) Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgements and decisions. Science 328(5986):1712–1715
Ariely D (2008) Predictably irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions. HaperCollins, New York
Bainbridge WA, Hart J, Kim ES, Scassellati B (2008) The effect of presence on human-robot interaction. International symposium on robot and human interactive communication. IEEE, Munich, Germany, pp 701–706
Baudrillard J (1995) Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI
Berry W (2010) What matters? Economics for a renewed commonwealth. Counterpoint, Berkeley
Biocca F (1997) The cyborg’s dilemma: Progressive embodiment in virtual environments. Humanizing the Information Age. 3. Second International Conference on Cognitive Technology, Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Japan, pp. 12–26
Biocca F, Harms C, Burgoon JK (2003) Towards a more robust theory and measure of social presence: review and suggested criteria. Presence 12(5):456–480
Borgmann A (1984) Technology and the character of contemporary life. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Borgmann A (1992) Crossing the postmodern divide. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Breazeal C (2005) Socially intelligent robots. Interactions 12(2):19–22
Breazeal C, Gray J, Berlin M (2009) An embodied cognition approach to mindreading skills for socially intelligent robots. Int J Robot Res 28(5):656–680
Caporeal L (1986) Anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism: two faces of the human machine. Comp Hum Behav 2:215–234
Cheshire T (2011) How Cynthia Breazeal is teaching robots how to be human. Wired magazine. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/start/best-friendbots. Accessed 19 Aug 2011
Coeckelbergh M (2009) Personal robots, appearance, and human good: a methodological reflection on roboethics. Int J Soc Rob 1(3):217–221
Duffy BR (2003) Anthropomorphism and the social robot. Robot Auto Syst 42:177–190
Eco U (1986) Travels in hyperreality. Harcourt, Orlando, FL
Galbraith PW (2009) Moe: exploring virtual potential in post-millennial Japan. Electron J Contemp Jpn Stud. http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html. Accessed 10 May 2011
Gaudagno RE, Blascovich J, Bailenson JN, McCall C (2007) Virtual humans and persuasion: the effects of agency and behavioral realism. Media Psychol 10:1–22
Hahn PH, Severson RL, Ruckert JH (2009) Technological nature—and the problem when good enough becomes good. In: Drenthen M, Keulartz J, Proctor J (eds) New visions of nature: complexity and authenticity. Springer, New York, pp 21–39
Heerink M, Krose B, Evers V, Wielinga B (2010) Relating conversational expressiveness to social presence and acceptance of an assistive social robot. Virtual Reality 14:77–84
Heider F, Simmel M (1944) An experimental study of apparent behavior. Am J Psychol 57(2):243–259
Jung Y, Lee KM (2004) Effects of physical embodiment on social presence of social robots. Presence 2004: the seventh international workshop on presence, pp 80–87
Katayama L (2009) Love in 2-D. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html. Accessed 10 May 2011
Lee KM (2004) Presence, explicated. Commun Theor 14(1):27–50
Leite I, Martinho C, Pereira A, Paiva A (2009) As time goes by; Long-term evaluation of social presence in robotic companions. International symposium on Robot and Human interactive communication. IEEE, Toyama, Japan, pp 669–674
Levy D (2008) Love + sex with robots: the evolution of human-robot relations. Harper Perennial, New York
Mori M (1970) The uncanny valley. Energy 7(4):33–35
Nowak KL, Biocca F (2003) The effect of the agency and anthropomorphism on users’ sense of telepresence, copresence, and social presence in virtual environments. Presence 12(5):481–494
Oldernburg R (1999) The great good place. Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA
Pollan M (2006) The omnivore’s dilemma. Penguin Books, New York
Putnam RD (2000) Bowling alone. Simon & Schuster, New York
Reeves B, Nass C (1996) The media equation: how people treat computers, television and new media like real people and places. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Samani HA, Cheok AD (2010) Towards a formulation of love in human—robot interaction. International symposium on Robot and Human interactive communication. IEEE, Viareggio, Italy, pp 94–99
Steuer J (1992) Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence. J Commun 42(4):73–93
Thaler R, Sunstein C (2008) Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT
Turkle S (1997) Life on the screen. Touchstone, New York
Turkle S (2005) The second self. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Turkle S (2011) Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, New York
Weizenbaum J (1976) Computer power and human reason. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco
Winner L (2004) Technologies as forms of life. In: Kaplan DM (ed) Readings in the philosophy of technology. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, pp 103–114
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge Edward Woodhouse, Albert Borgmann and another anonymous reviewer for providing helpful comments, emendations and critiques in the process of preparing this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dotson, T. Authentic virtual others? The promise of post-modern technologies. AI & Soc 29, 11–21 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-012-0435-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-012-0435-x