Read Online Alone Together by Sherry Turkle - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sherry Turkle
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Furby, whose English is “destined” to improve as long as you keep it turned on, AIBO stakes a claim to intelligence and impresses with its ability to show what’s on its mind.
If AIBO is in some sense a toy, it is a toy that changes minds. It does this in several ways. It heightens our sense of being close to developing a postbiological life and not just in theory or in the laboratory. And it suggests how this passage will take place. It will begin with our seeing the new life as “as if ” life and then deciding that “as if ” may be life enough. Even now, as we contemplate “creatures” with artificial feelings and intelligence, we come to reflect differently on our own. The question here is not whether machines can be made to think like people but whether people have always thought like machines.
The reconsiderations begin with children. Zane, six, knows that AIBO doesn’t have a “real brain and heart,” but they are “real enough.” AIBO is “kind of alive” because it can function “ as if it had a brain and heart.” Paree, eight, says that AIBO’s brain is made of “machine parts,” but that doesn’t keep it from being “like a dog’s brain.... Sometimes, the way [AIBO] acted, like he will get really frustrated if he can’t kick the ball. That seemed like a real emotion . . . so that made me treat him like he was alive, I guess.” She says that when AIBO needs its batteries charged, “it is like a dog’s nap.” And unlike a teddy bear, “an AIBO needs its naps.”
As Paree compares her AIBO’s brain to that of a dog, she clears the way for other possibilities. She considers whether AIBO might have feelings like a person, wondering if AIBO “knows its own feelings”—or “if the controls inside know them.” Paree says that people use both methods. Sometimes people have spontaneous feelings and “just become aware” of them (this is “knowing your own feelings”). But other times, people have to program themselves to have the feelings they want. “If I was sad and wanted to be happy”—here Paree brings her fists up close to her ears to demonstrate concentration and intent—“I would have to make my brain say that I am set on being happy.” The robot, she thinks, probably has the second kind of feelings, but she points out that both ways of getting to a feeling get you to the same place: a smile or a frown if you are a person, a happy or sad sound if you are an AIBO. Different inner states lead to the same outward states, and so inner states cease to matter. AIBO carries a behaviorist sensibility.
GROWING UP AIBO
With a price tag of $1,300 to $2,000, AIBO is meant for grown-ups. But the robot dog is a harbinger of the digital pets of the future, and so I present it to children from age four to thirteen as well as to adults. I bring it to schools, to after-school play centers, and, as we shall see in later chapters, to senior centers and nursing homes. I offer AIBOs for home studies, where families get to keep them for two or three weeks. Sometimes, I study families who have bought an AIBO of their own. In these home studies, just as in the home studies of Furbies, families are asked to keep a “robot diary.” What is it like living with an AIBO?
The youngest children I work with—the four- to six-year-olds—are initially preoccupied with trying to figure out what the AIBO is, for it is not a dog and not a doll. The desire to get such things squared away is characteristic of their age. In the early days of digital culture, when they met their first electronic toys and games, children of this age would remain preoccupied with such questions of categories. But now, faced with this sociable machine, children address them and let them drop, taken up with the business of a new relationship.
Maya, four, has an AIBO at home. She first asks questions about its origins (“How do they make it?”) and comes up with her own answer: “I think they start with foil, then
If AIBO is in some sense a toy, it is a toy that changes minds. It does this in several ways. It heightens our sense of being close to developing a postbiological life and not just in theory or in the laboratory. And it suggests how this passage will take place. It will begin with our seeing the new life as “as if ” life and then deciding that “as if ” may be life enough. Even now, as we contemplate “creatures” with artificial feelings and intelligence, we come to reflect differently on our own. The question here is not whether machines can be made to think like people but whether people have always thought like machines.
The reconsiderations begin with children. Zane, six, knows that AIBO doesn’t have a “real brain and heart,” but they are “real enough.” AIBO is “kind of alive” because it can function “ as if it had a brain and heart.” Paree, eight, says that AIBO’s brain is made of “machine parts,” but that doesn’t keep it from being “like a dog’s brain.... Sometimes, the way [AIBO] acted, like he will get really frustrated if he can’t kick the ball. That seemed like a real emotion . . . so that made me treat him like he was alive, I guess.” She says that when AIBO needs its batteries charged, “it is like a dog’s nap.” And unlike a teddy bear, “an AIBO needs its naps.”
As Paree compares her AIBO’s brain to that of a dog, she clears the way for other possibilities. She considers whether AIBO might have feelings like a person, wondering if AIBO “knows its own feelings”—or “if the controls inside know them.” Paree says that people use both methods. Sometimes people have spontaneous feelings and “just become aware” of them (this is “knowing your own feelings”). But other times, people have to program themselves to have the feelings they want. “If I was sad and wanted to be happy”—here Paree brings her fists up close to her ears to demonstrate concentration and intent—“I would have to make my brain say that I am set on being happy.” The robot, she thinks, probably has the second kind of feelings, but she points out that both ways of getting to a feeling get you to the same place: a smile or a frown if you are a person, a happy or sad sound if you are an AIBO. Different inner states lead to the same outward states, and so inner states cease to matter. AIBO carries a behaviorist sensibility.
GROWING UP AIBO
With a price tag of $1,300 to $2,000, AIBO is meant for grown-ups. But the robot dog is a harbinger of the digital pets of the future, and so I present it to children from age four to thirteen as well as to adults. I bring it to schools, to after-school play centers, and, as we shall see in later chapters, to senior centers and nursing homes. I offer AIBOs for home studies, where families get to keep them for two or three weeks. Sometimes, I study families who have bought an AIBO of their own. In these home studies, just as in the home studies of Furbies, families are asked to keep a “robot diary.” What is it like living with an AIBO?
The youngest children I work with—the four- to six-year-olds—are initially preoccupied with trying to figure out what the AIBO is, for it is not a dog and not a doll. The desire to get such things squared away is characteristic of their age. In the early days of digital culture, when they met their first electronic toys and games, children of this age would remain preoccupied with such questions of categories. But now, faced with this sociable machine, children address them and let them drop, taken up with the business of a new relationship.
Maya, four, has an AIBO at home. She first asks questions about its origins (“How do they make it?”) and comes up with her own answer: “I think they start with foil, then
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