Emotech

Speculative product that explores the emotional relationship between man & machine.

How necessary is to give computers a human-like emotional attributions?  

Or is it time that computers start having a personality of their own? 

Emotionless Technologies is an on-going series of experiments and reflections that explores the emotional connection between human and machine.

Humans are a very emotional beings. Mostly because humans use emotions to understand and communicate. For example, in order to comprehend our surroundings, we attribute human emotions to everything non human, like the weather, animals, objects and specially computers. And this is why Computer Scientists take advantage of this anthropomorphization by giving computers human-like features, like voices, friendly faces and even bodies, to the point that we create uncanny versions of ourselves. The result is that humans anticipate computers to behave like humans. And that is why we get frustrated when they react differently than we expect them to. Even with the rapidevolution of technology, today computers are far away from having the same cognitive capabilities of a human being. Perhaps computers have already emotions of their own. Some specialist even think that Technology is could be seen as a new extension of life. Emotionless Technologies is a series of experiments that explores how humans relate to technology, focusing on different aspects of their relationship.

EmoTech # 1: 

Rituals & Programing

The first EmoTech experiment, explores a way humans could share their emotions with computers, by mashing up an affective ritual and the act of programing. Instead of writing code on a keyboard, the user can create computer programs by putting together a number of abstract, meaningless objects, each one with a specific command. As the program develops in real time,the ritual of tangible programming transform the tridimensional composition, into an object with a meaning, the program itself, that stays as a witness of the dialog between the human and the machine.Speculative product that explores the emotional relationship between man & machine.

EmoTech # 2: 

Mental Limb

In the present day, we are experiencing a new way of emotional attachment with computers that had never occurred with an object before. We spend all day working with our computers andentertain ourselves with them. We use computers to communicate with each other, we create and translate our ideas on them and store relevant personal information, contacts, digital objects (pictures, music or video), share them online and store it in our computer’s hard drive. We get access to information on demand and we can see what is happening in the world in real time.  By spending a great deal of time interacting with these objects, it would be natural to say that computers are becoming a more profound mental extension of us, that is changing our way of thinking and the society we live in. But what are the consequences are we facing today with this “mental limb”? Can our relationship with computer evolve us into a new way of existence?  

Because the exponential growthof technology1, experts predict that human intelligence will transcend biology and will start to develop a technological evolution. And today human kind is starting to show this shift by the way we use computer to solve our daily lives problems. Is this need of us using the computer, driving us away of our human existence or is just the beginning of a new epoch in human evolution? And with this changes, is human nature and its ability to attribute emotions to the non-human, enough for us to perceive ourselves in another entity?