The Sensory Overload of Emerging Technology
I spend a lot of time reading about technology. The past few weeks (more than most) the headlines have made my head spin. Even news as noteworthy as Meta’s LLaMA leak was barely covered amidst pressing announcements from Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. If ever there was a time to describe as “sensory overload,” Spring 2023 would be it.
Fall 2021 was almost as bad - when the world was first haunted by the word “Metaverse.” I’ve written a bit about this concept. To give a TLDR, I see ideas like the “Metaverse” as a broader expression of the way the internet is changing to become more immersive, more embedded in our experience of the world around us. We might call this a “Spatial Web” to quote Dan Mapes and Gabriel René. Or an embodied web. Or maybe just ambient computing.
Abstractly, we’re talking about our digital and physical worlds converging. The digital world improves its understanding of the physical world just as our lives in the physical world are contextualized by a digital layer.
In practice, this looks like my Roomba, Carl, an early expression of the emerging web.
(Trigger warning: I will be anthropomorphizing Carl. I’m sorry - he provides too much value for me not to consider him family.)
Carl vacuums my home based on a map of my physical space. On that map, I can see exactly where Carl is and where he has been. This is really important when he gets stuck. Maybe this happens on my mobile app. Maybe one day it happens on augmented reality glasses. Maybe one day a full hologram. The device doesn’t actually matter.
What matters is Carl is learning about my physical space, and I’m learning about Carl’s progress through a digital layer.
One of the reasons this digital layer is so important is because human perception of reality is largely dependent upon what we experience through our senses – what we touch, see, hear, taste, and smell. This perception goes on to inform our cognitive and affective states, intentions, and, ultimately, our behavior.
Technology that can change our sensory experiences can change our behavior. That’s powerful.
Technology that can trick our sensory experiences is also very powerful. Truepic and Revel.ai released a video this week echoing that thought. They labeled their production the “world’s first authenticated deepfake video.” Though there are still some uncanny valley cues, the sentiment they shared is powerful. What do we do when our senses can no longer discern truth from fiction?
We are experiencing sensory overload of emerging tech - literally and metaphorically. Literally, every single podcast and news article I’ve consumed has “GPT” in the title. Metaphorically, technologies that will power the next version of the web will overload our senses. Not because it’s too much information, but because it will be information our senses can’t always rely on.
These thoughts are my own and do not represent the viewpoints of any company or organization with which I’m affiliated.