divnr
Your emotions are ambiguous -Your Computer is not
If our primary method of communication can only operate on literal meaning and certainty, it is only a matter of time before we do.
divnr is an idea I have been working on for some time and was born out of frustration with the certainty the technological age insists it can offer. It indeed excels with finding or calculating absolute truths in our world; the quickest route between two coordinates, the lowest price for a Ford Focus, the next best Chess move. What computers determine in a nanosecond and the minds behind this stage of our technical revolution are phenomenal.
However, the qualities in the machinery and the engineers who construct its mechanisms are configured to seek out certainty. Computers do not play well with ambiguity, and it is natural for those drawn to the profession of designing within its framework to incline towards the same absolute terms.
If the machine world operated within its limitations of the known, there would be no issue. But, due to its vastness, there are few aspects of life into which this network and its mantras do not penetrate.
Take the simple example of the “like” button, present in almost every social network. This seemingly innocuous response belies the level of ambiguity both in the stimulus and the stimulated “like”.
Suppose you look from the position that no one can ever truly know what it is like to be another person; it is easy to understand that even this reductive, banal interaction of posting a “like” could help soothe the anxiety of separateness.
Perhaps the best way to view this is to recognise the interaction from the native context of its host machinery. For example, boolean operators ( simple words (and, or, not or and not) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search) are part of a computer’s staple diet — is a specific thing true, or is it false? So, perfectly in keeping with the environment, a response is prompted: do you like or not like this.
We know that our actual feelings for a tweet, photo or product are more complicated than this convenient signal can give us, but these nuances are harder to capture, store and analyse. So rather than push the interface to absorb these more sophisticated responses, we seem to have adapted to the format most easily digested by the machine. The introduction in 2016 of additional “reactions” to Facebook’s roster of accepted emotions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry) hardly helped matters. Four of them are positive; such is the reluctance to convey anything deemed a negative feeling. More importantly, though, they are arbitrary. Because humans are incapable of feeling or discerning more complex emotions? No, because Computers do not play well with ambiguity.
There are many more examples of this prescribed approach to extracting user information, most notably registration pages, usually comprising name, age, city, email, and password. Its ubiquity might make us believe this is the most appropriate, or even the only technique to determine the answer to the age-old question, “Who are you?”. However, a person is more than this dataset, yet this format has not changed over twenty years.
Why?
Familiarity, of course, plays its part, and subsequent interactions on the platform also enrich a system’s understanding of an individual or group. Still, I think the main reason why this hasn’t changed is that they provide definite facts that are common to most people, and therefore machines parse them easily.
Why you may ask, is this reductive representation of human emotion and identity important, it only exists in a portion of our lives, amongst other real-life interactions. These “real” interactions are becoming rapidly smaller, a trend accelerated by the Covid pandemic; personalised shopping, criteria based dating, automated parts of customer service. The more we occupy the digital world, the more our lives are lived on its terms — the less well we play with ambiguity.
The machines’ insistence on absolutes has made them something of a comfort blanket for our anxiety for certainty. Through their contained image of the world, they have convinced us that we can be sure of something so impenetrable as another’s character and deliver judgements without hesitation.
We often forget how densely populated the internet is because our interactions with it usually occur in isolation. More traditional population centres like mega-cities, I believe, offer the greatest diversity, not because there is something magical in their soil or air, but because the closer we are to one another, the more pressing the need to distinguish ourselves from others.
Among the billions of netizens, we feel this need to find a distinction in ourselves most urgently, but we have a diminished ability to do so with the ease of modern life.
There is little more unique to a person’s identity than their intonation and turn of phrase, which are instantly recognisable.
Everyone who has ever sent an SMS or WhatsApp message has had the experience of being misunderstood or being perfectly understood for the emotion expressed at the time but regretting the contents. It is far easier to say something aggressive or downright rude in a text than to hear your voice verbalise the same sentiment. The ownership and value we place on our distinct vocal signature is something, I would argue, that is harder to put to the employment of meanness or ill will than the anonymity of messaging. Once again, convenience degrades our sense of self.
Hyper-awareness around social standing and how our online activities may impact our lives is a very modern affliction. After all, like computers, dogmatic people are drawn to absolute reasoning, making sense that this would be their forum of choice.
In light of these issues of Certainty, Network Scale, and Convenience, I believe there is a need for an alternative. It is a system that counters machine instincts, is comfortable with uncertainty, and transfers that comfort to its users. If our primary method of communication can only operate on literal meaning and certainty, it is only a matter of time before we do.
divnr is an AI-powered platform that recognises your emotions and connects you to products & places that suit your mood.
Please feel free to take a look at what we at divnr are currently building:
divnr is an AI-powered platform that recognises your emotions and connects you to products & places that suit your mood.
