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"Our robot overlords are already here.\nWe\u2019re just anthropomorphizing our technology in more subtle ways than we\u2019d imagined in the past. We stigmatize Theodore Twombly, Joaquin Phoenix\u2019s character in the movie, Her, as morally questionable when falling in love with his operating system, yet don\u2019t find it adulterous when the last face we look at before falling asleep belongs to our smartphone versus our soulmate.\nIt\u2019s time to come to grips with what it means to be human in a digital environment. That is, a fully digital or virtual environment. We can talk about unplugging from technology, but that behavior is more akin to minimizing an activity window while our relationship continues running in the background of our lives. Sensors in our phones and the innards of our globe monitor ubiquitously, broadcasting our unencrypted consciousness to the world.\nSee also: Active Twitter Use Could Lead to Divorce and Infidelity, Study Says\nIt\u2019s hard not to get philosophical. Or judgmental \u2014 I\u2019m genuinely struggling with the idea that we\u2019ll soon fully merge with machines. \nAs technology gains human level sentience, I need to evolve my mindset. What if my daughter wants to marry an algorithm? Can I have dinner with its parents? Can we expect to see anti robot-bullying campaigns soon? Or a reworked cover of Macklemore\u2019s, \u201CSIM love?\u201D\nI joke because I\u2019m conflicted. I\u2019m genuinely a bit freaked at the idea that humans and machines are already so inexorably linked. And I firmly believe that things like the wearables industry are simply intermediary technologies to mentally prepare us for our inevitable union with machines. They help reveal the personal data that\u2019s currently invisible in our lives while providing a thin, albeit fashionable, buffer between the time devices will be on our skin versus within.\nMy goal here is to confront my unease with this union while my identity is largely located in my cortex rather that the cloud. I\u2019m not anti-robot, as I thought I might be in the past. But the reality of transcendence with technology shouldn\u2019t be taken lightly, even if it is inevitable.\nThe resolve to evolve\n\u201CWhat it means to be human and the evolution of humanity is changing so rapidly that we\u2019re kind of at a different stage of being human. There\u2019s not a lot of distinction between the natural and artificial any more,\u201D says Colin Marchon, an NYU student and documentary filmmaker.  \nWe met at the recent Augmented World Expo in Brooklyn where I was on a panel discussing the future of Augmented Reality. Colin, 20, is currently working on a thesis film called The Transhuman Identity to be completed in late 2014. He grew up in Silicon Valley with parents in the tech industry. Already active on messaging boards by age seven, he noted in our interview that he\u2019s part of the first generation to have all of his life take place alongside, or within, the Internet.\n\u201CI\u2019m used to experiencing my life being almost fully documented and my kids could have access to my entire history since I was a teenager,\u201D Marchon said. In my experience, my younger friends and relatives are way more savvy about their privacy and digital lives than my friends who are over thirty. It makes sense that overtly merging with technology would not be as freaky to them as it is to me and my peers.\nThe nature of intimacy is evolving along with technology. Do you raise your eyebrows at friends who met via a dating service? I did the first time a friend told me she met her life\u2019s love in an old-school, AOL-era chatroom. I thought it was remarkably mature that they dated via phone and computer for months without meeting in person, but felt it was a risky trend at the time. Now I don\u2019t. \n\"What does it say about how we\u2019re evolving, that more women would rather give up sex than their iPhones?\u201D asks Ramona Pringle, an assistant professor at Ryerson Unversity\u2019s RTA School of Media, and the director and producer Avatar Secrets, an interactive iPad experience exploring the complexities of human connection in the wired world. The  quote is from a survey of more than 3,500 women where 48% said their smartphone was more important to them than intimacy with another person.\nWhere at first glance it may seem callous for these women to prefer silicon to sex, who are we to judge?\nPerhaps soon we\u2019ll get used to people declaring overt relationships with their smartphones, which will make texting your lover into something akin to a Jean Paul Sartre play. What if you have to carry a different device at work than your personal device? Will your mobile lover get jealous? Maybe start hitting on your Nest while you\u2019re at work?\n\u201CWe talk about the future as if these robotic devices are going to be \u2018other,\u2019\u201D noted Pringle in our interview, in terms of how we see robots or technology as fundamentally separate from ourselves. But like most of us, she reports her iPhone could only be closer to her if it was embedded under her skin. \n\u201COur phones are already becoming part of us. I rely on mine for everything, even knowing all the phone numbers of everyone I love that I don\u2019t have memorized. So in essence, I\u2019m the one becoming more of a robot, or cyborg, as my day to day life increasingly relies on this technology, and my next of kin becomes this mobile phone,\u201D she said. \nSee also: Wearable Tech Isn't Just Fashionable, It's Improving Lives\nFor myself, I barely remember my home phone number and would certainly be dead in the water to call my kids\u2019 school or a local hospital if I couldn\u2019t access my contacts or the Internet. If 911 weren\u2019t only three numbers I likely would have forgotten it already.\nThe logic of the loss\n\u201CIt\u2019s counterintuitive in many ways, that as these services and devices improve and embed themselves deeper into our lives we notice them less.\u201D Patrick Tucker is the author of, The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move?, technology editor for Defense One and editor-at-large for The Futurist magazine. \nThe book describes the idea of telemetry, and how the real-time conveying of signals, as in the case of multiple sensors being applied to our bodies in a hospital setting, is transforming our present age into the Naked, or purely visible, Future. \nIn our interview, I asked if the nature of this algorithmic lifestyle would rob us of anything central to our humanity. While Tucker feels we have yet to encounter a technology that has made this happen, he pointed out that, \u201COur sense of humanity can undergo a rapid evolution and this can be disorienting and alienating, creating a feeling of loss. What we\u2019re talking about is a multiplication of humanity across different spaces, and that will feel very strange. But it doesn\u2019t represent a permanent loss\u2014it\u2019s a doubling of humanity.\u201D\nI sympathize with this sense of loss. I do feel disoriented when looking around my living room and noting that my wife, son and daughter are all tethered to screens. I\u2019m keenly aware of the almost chemical need to check my phone while listening to a family member speak, oftentimes missing what they\u2019re saying while my eyes dart towards my phone. In these scenarios, I don\u2019t know what a doubling of humanity will look like. Perhaps real-time notifications will only invade my consciousness with messages I\u2019ve deemed important. But my current behaviors mirror addiction more than enlightenment.\n\u201CPeople are becoming anti-social. Before phones you were always thinking about what conversations you could make with someone else. Now many people prefer their phone over conversations with humans,\u201D says Mrigaen Kapadia.\nKapadia and his wife co-founded a company, Mobifolio, and developed, BreakFree, an app aimed at controlling phone addiction. It monitors your mobile usage and tracks how addicted you are to your phone, registering how often you swipe to unlock your screen or which apps you use on a too-frequent basis. \nWhen I asked Mrigaen if prolonged engagement with technology could be deemed personal preference as opposed to addiction, he cited a video showing two Japanese men in their thirties who chose to interact with virtual girlfriends instead of dealing with human ones. He cited it as a dangerous precedent. \u201CWe want to make people realize that human company is better than phone company,\u201D he said.\nBut is this a universal truth? I recently wrote a book on the nature of technology and happiness and found a great deal of research showing that our intrinsic wellbeing does increase when we\u2019re with our families, friends, or community. But who\u2019s to say that community needs to be carbon versus silicon? Perhaps we\u2019ll only prefer human company to machines until technology advances to the point where we can\u2019t tell the difference. And odds are we\u2019ll start to prefer cyborgian humans to the \u201Creal thing\u201D because they\u2019ll be programmable and will never get sick. We\u2019ll get all the benefits of human interaction without a lot of our current struggles.\nSee also: Why 'Her' Is the Best Movie Ever Made About the Singularity\nThis idea still makes me feel wonky, but it may be my age. Colin, the NYU student, had a different take on the Japanese men's cyber-girlfriends: \u201CIt doesn\u2019t matter that she lives in a computer\u2014the woman makes him happy. Whether she\u2019s biology or technology doesn\u2019t matter anymore,\u201D he said.\nThe heart of being human\n\u201CWisdom is seeing through false identities,\u201D notes Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, the wildly popular podcast and now annual conference. \u201CWisdom is seeing through the ways in which we cling to conceptions of who we are and what the world is that are out of synch with how things are functioning.\u201D \nThis insight from my interview with Vincent was particularly compelling. Like Patrick Tucker\u2019s noting how change can bring a sense of alienation, perhaps my current sense of anxiety comes from clinging to a form of humanity that is now out of date. Today, the world functions almost more digitally than not, at least in the visible spectrum. But our consciousness is tied to our screens and data on an ever-expanding basis. It\u2019s in this in-between space that I don\u2019t know how to function. Horn points out that, \u201CWe can\u2019t hold on to any particular thing \u2013 it changes the next instant. It\u2019s when we do hold onto it, that it causes suffering and pain.\u201D\nAfter all my research into the Artificial Intelligence space, I\u2019m still at a crossroads. I\u2019m excited for some of the innovations that transcendence will bring, but have grown used to embracing my suffering as a key to personal growth. I struggle with the logic of algorithms becoming so advanced that people may not have time to naturally develop their own preferences. It feels like we\u2019re close to the point where when examining our humanity, it\u2019s not just that we don\u2019t know who we are, but that we can\u2019t. That still feels like a deep loss to me, and it\u2019s one I\u2019m not ready to give up just yet."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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