ROBOTS AND RELATIONSHIPS - An Article

I sit on a neatly vacuum cleaned couch in my living room and use a remote controller to switch on the television which in turn is connected to a concave shaped bowl that receives signals from a satellite. My living room is therefore technically sufficient and efficient. We do not notice is the role of technology in our lives though it’s omnipresent. That is because it has become an integral part of our life. We often hear people talking about phones and how their life would be without one.

If we think beyond we notice that the commotion and confusion of normal life is thoroughly reduced by technology. In the near future the “internet of things” or “IOT” will take care of our intent and enhance our communication with the things around us. Let’s add another dimension to this. The technology will help us do our work better but can it be our partner? Can your phone be your brother, or sister, or father or even your lover?

The growth of artificial intelligence will allow various devices to think for themselves. These devices will just be like any other person. They learn and grow intellectually and become better eventually. As time passes they will be able to feel our emotions and have some of their own. The problem starts when these devices start to feel. They are like thoughts without a head and feelings without a heart.  Further into the future, people may fill their hearts with these devices just like they fill their rooms. After all a device is a device. The innateness of a man is different from that of a device although artificially intelligent.

With the invention of “feeling things” there will be a new world altogether. A digital world will be born and “the digital civilizations” will start. Man’s past is a puzzle. The questions of the before and after can also be answered by the religious sciences. Science cannot answer everything but it is the basis for “feeling things”. Maybe life as we know didn’t start by some chemical reactions. Maybe man was dropped onto the earth by someone for some reason.As a man is to the devices, who is it to the man? We might have been the brain child of a far greater civilization who yet controls us with their extraordinary “force of things”. The floods might be their flush and the landslides their push.

-TEJA SRINIVAS