The next big thing will look like a toy pet
A few weeks ago I tweeted asking if there was a modern Tamagotchi-like or Tamogatchi-inspired smartphone app and got a few helpful pointers.
But I can’t help but feel like these fall short of their potential. With the modern smartphone, we can do better than updating the original Tamagotchi with better graphics. Smartphones don’t just have nicer displays; they are faster, are network-connected, have more sensors and smarter software. The modern Tamogatchi should take advantage of all these things. But the original Tamogatchi missed something even more important. Pets aren’t just something we take care of. They take care of us, too.
And increasingly, so do our smartphones. We use apps and gadgets to track our eating, activities and habits. We create all kinds of other data too: your smartphone should know what kind of mood you’re in based on the language you use in messages and emails, the songs you listen to on Spotify, the number of of times you’ve opened Twitter in the last hour. But the exhaust of our digital (and digitally measured) lives increasingly seems like it is going nowhere. Fitness wristbands are like strings tied around our fingers: useful reminders to keep going, but falling short of the grand promises of the data synced to our pocket computers and cloud mothers.
Separately, researchers at MIT and other places are doing the hard work of figuring out how to create socially engaging robots. But I wonder if the physical manifestation of the robot is a red herring, unnecessarily increasing the complexity of making compelling AI-driven friends, mentors and coaches for humans. The late, great Clifford Nass’s seminal research Computers Are Social Actors suggests that perhaps we don’t need to mimic humans in physical space to create real social connections between man and machine.
We are attempting to create a health, wellness and happiness platform off the exhaust of data from our smartphones but we are missing the most important part. Not friends, not followers: the social interface between you and your device. Forget dashboards of metrics. Your personal pocket computer should be your friend, pet, coach and mentor using data to make decisions, but using its connection with you to make a difference.
In other words, the modern Tamogatchi would look like a dog if we had evolved dogs from Siri instead of wolves. Maybe the next big thing won’t look like a toy, but a toy pet.
