Cyborgs vs. rooms: two visions for the future of computing.
Broadly speaking, I can see two visions for the future of how we interact with computers: cyborgs and rooms.
The first one is where the industry is heading today; I'm more interested in the latter.
Cyborgs
In the short term, cyborgs mean wearable devices.
The original definition of cyborg by Clynes and Kline in 1960 was... a human being adapting their body to suit a new environment ( as discussed previously ).
Apple's AirPods are cyborg enhancements: transparency mode helps you hear better.
Meta AI glasses They improve your memory and internet knowledge – you murmur your questions and the answer is returned in audio, loaded into your working memory. Cognitively, this is like thinking hard to remember something.
I can see a future being built where I'll have a smartwatch that gives me a sense of direction, a smart ring for biofeedback, smart headphones and glasses for perfect recall and anticipation… Natural Born Cyborgs Andy Clark's 2003 study explains why this is perfectly impedance-compatible with how our brains already function.
In the long term? I've joked about that before. a transcranial magnetic stimulation helmet that would help me walk to work on my own two feet. , ...and this is the cyborg direction of the journey: nootropics, CRISPR gene therapy, body modification and... Cut the tips of your fingers to insert magnets. and create a sixth sense of electric field.
But you can see the cyborg paradigm in action with hardware startups today trying to create the native AI format of the future: lapel pins, lanyards, rings, Neuralink, and other brain-computer interfaces…
When tech companies think about the Third Device — the mythical device that comes after the PC and the smartphone — this is what they're aiming for: the future of the personal computer is to transform the person into the computer.
Rooms
Compare augmented users with augmented environments. Notably:
- Dynamicland (2018) – Bret Victor's vision of
a computer that is a place,
a programmable room - Put that there (1980) – MIT research on multimodal conversational computing (voice and gestures) at room scale
- Cybersyn Project (1971) – Stafford Beer's room-sized cybernetic brain for the Chilean economy
- SAGE ( as discussed previously ) (1958–) – the peak of computing before the PC, Cold War group computing.
And countless other HCI projects…
The vision of room-scale computing has always been divided.
Is it ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), in which computing power is embedded in everything around us, culminating in smart dust? Is it ambient computing, which also presupposes that computing will be invisible? Or is it quiet computing, which is more of a design approach, according to which computing should integrate properly with our cognitive systems, rather than chasing attention?
So, there isn't a good word for this paradigm, which is why I simply call it the room scale, which is the scale at which I can act as a user.
I would put smart speakers in the room-scale/augmented environment group: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, all the various smart home systems like Matter, and really the whole Internet of Things movement—ultimately, it's a... Holodeck / Star Trek computer…
A way of envisioning the future of computer interaction.
And robotics too. Roombas, humanoid robots that wash our dishes and Tabletop paper robots that act as avatars for your friends. , It's all part of this room-scale paradigm.
Instead of "cyborg," I like the concept of somaformation by science fiction author Becky Chambers ( as discussed previously ), the same concept, but milder.
Somaforming vs. terraforming: changing ourselves to adapt to a new environment, or changing the environment to adapt to us.
Both cyborgs and rooms are good guiding stars for our collective computing future, did you know?
Both can be done in good and bad ways. Both can make equal use of AI.
Personally, I'm more interested in room-scale computing and where it's going. Multi-actor and multimodal. We live in the real world, and along with other people, that's where computing should be too. Computers you can get into… and get out of.
So, the question is interesting: while everyone is building glasses, augmented reality devices, and AI-powered cyborg prosthetics to hang around their necks, what should we be building in real life, for the rooms where we live and work? What are the key enabling technologies?
I think that's been forgotten.
