Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and we're the cyborgs people she studies. "The minute you look at a screen, you're in a symbiotic relationship with the device," Case said. And that's what makes us cyborgs.
Case, co founder of Geoloqi kicked off her SXSW keynote Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface by digging deeper into the tools the cyborg uses. Today, tools are extensions of the mental self, not the physical self. This tool, this extension of the mental self changes and evolves all the time. Today's tools from smartphones to computers are devices that Case thinks of like the Mary Poppins bag. They're larger on the inside than on the outside. If you were to take the information these devices contain and place it into the physical world, the amount of information is astounding. Case said she's concerned by this because it's all ethereal. It's not information carved into stone like the Egyptians did.
Our cyborg brains are different too. We have hyperlinked memories where we need to find a certain email to remember the information we need. The computer becomes our external brain and cyborgs become the paleontologist searching for information. On top of that, there are now endless obligations in the ways we communicate across email and social media. Artist Nick Rodrigues demonstrated this in his "Email Garden," an installation where grass grew each time he received an email over the course of a week.
Welcome to the world of information jet lag where each communication medium has its own set of acceptable response times. On Twitter, it's quick. Text messages are also fast, almost instantaneous versus an email, which may take longer.
It's these kinds of societal expectations and realities that test our cyborg powers. It's also the technology itself, which can get in the way. Replicating physical design interfaces in digital is limiting. Think of e-reader apps where a page turns versus the seamlessness of Flipboard. Case is after "calm technology," where it's in the background and relaxed. Think invisible interfaces and trigger based interactions.
Imagine keeping track of locations you visit and leaving a reminder message there for yourself. So the next time you go to the grocery store, you see a message reminding you not to forget the milk. Or it could tie to your house so that when you're getting close to home, the lights automatically switch on so you'd never come home to a dark house. Another example is that you're on the bus and you're alerted when your stop is near.
Cyborgs miss out on life when they're looking down at the screen. Location-based technologies that operate in the background can help us enjoy and control reality without being tied to a machine.