Issue 302 Surrogates March 28, 2014

What is a surrogate? What does it do? and What does it have to do with you? Well, let me tell you.

A surrogate: In the case I am talking about, I am talking about machines (again). In this case the machine is a surrogate for us. In short we will have machine partners that will act in a similar fashion to R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars. In the case of our society, the robots or personal computers (persicom sound like a good name?) will have a way of interacting with us on an intelligent basis. They will be able to take any command and based on capability perform that command to the letter. As people are becoming more spontaneous and need more flexibility, the personal computer or robot assistant will have to act as a secretary, librarian, archivist, researcher, and stenographer all wrapped into one, and maybe even then some. Basically, people are good at being spontaneous, while computers have fantastic memory. As such, using these surrogates to amplify our abilities like memory and information recall skills makes it all that much easier for people to conduct their daily lives.

More complex surrogates may aid the disabled and seniors who cannot leave their homes, by actually going to work in their stead or even go shopping for them. This can be an automated process, or even done via remote. Some surrogates may come in the form of simple exoskeletons enabling the bedridden to walk out the house and back into to the sunlight.

Evolution of the Surrogate: In my opinion, the surrogates evolved from when we decided to replace people with machines in all the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that required zero ingenuity and trouble shooting skills. From there we wanted smarter more capable machines that could do that semi, dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. Now we want to have them as our personal assistants to help us in our daily tasks by voice command (or maybe even mental signal) alone. Thus, we have slowly reduced the need for people to work in various rolls and ways of being. So we have allowed these surrogates to replace us in all those boring (based on opinion) jobs. But are we trying to have them replace us? Do we already not have a problem with the fact that most people in the United States are not more than five feet away from their personal electronic devices like a smart phone?

Conclusion: Yet another ethical situation we have here. Do we need more of these surrogate machines to do these jobs? Is there a need for a personal computer type robot device like R2-D2 and C-3PO (though that would be very cool)? My answer is be wary of it, but also it should be your personal opinion on whether you buy such a device. It will be you to decide if these machines will be needed and useful in your every day life. The reason is because you will have to buy it. Enjoy thinking what life would be like with your own personal computerized assistant.