What if one day, we wake up and realise we do not even need to get out of bed, get out of the house, because we can control a surrogate to go about our daily activities on our behalf? Would that not be wonderful? Imagine we can just lie in bed the whole day while our surrogates go about the daily operations on what we need to do.
We can even make the surrogates tall, elegant, cute, good-looking, flawlessly immaculate, perfectly stylish and fashionable, well-coiffed hair and manicured nails. The surrogates can enjoy whatever we enjoy, and more. So if I want to find out how it is like to be a man, I can just operate a tall, dark and handsome bronzed Greek God and see how women swoon over him.
That will be perfect, will it not? This is just cyber world and simulation at a very advanced level. But the thing is, no man is an island. By staying in bed the whole time without going out into the world and actually interacting with real people instead of sending a surrogate and interacting with other surrogates, we may end up losing touch with society, and that will be a disaster indeed.
Already, more and more people are so engrossed in computer games and the cyber world that they end up not knowing how to interact with real people. Interacting with people online and in a virtual reality world is simply not the same as actual interaction with people. Perhaps this is why there are so many oddballs around lately, since many people nowadays interact with machines more than actual human interaction.
When you are online, you can chat, play games, and have a war of the worlds with each other, you can even start conferencing with a group of people, but nothing beats the actual meeting up face to face with someone. The chatting over a meal or drink, the observation of actual human behaviour of another person or group of people - something you can never get just by interacting online.
So if humans are replaced by robots, what do you think will happen? People will lose their abilities to interact with others because they are so self-reliant on the machines. They will not be able to breathe outside, nor be as fit as before, nor go about their daily tasks like before. They will then become lazy, laid-back and totally inadequate.
Yes, surrogacy is a good idea since human abilities are limited. But however limited human abilities are, we still came up with high tech machines, virtual reality, cyber worlds, artificial intelligence. We invented the machines and robots. We are capable of all these without any help from any machines in the first place!
So who is to say we will not come up with better things? Now with the age of advanced technology, we are all dependent on machines. I will be lying if I say I do not depend on technology too. Shorn of the internet and laptop for a week and I will start going into cold turkey.
But we should not become so dependent on machines that we lost our natural ability to socialise and interact with others, that we allow machines to replace the way we live our lives. I do not know about others, but nothing gives me greater pleasure to go out and spend time with my friends and loved ones, to have my own children, to raise my kids, to go travelling. I want to be able to do all these personally and no machine or robot can ever replace that!
We can even make the surrogates tall, elegant, cute, good-looking, flawlessly immaculate, perfectly stylish and fashionable, well-coiffed hair and manicured nails. The surrogates can enjoy whatever we enjoy, and more. So if I want to find out how it is like to be a man, I can just operate a tall, dark and handsome bronzed Greek God and see how women swoon over him.
That will be perfect, will it not? This is just cyber world and simulation at a very advanced level. But the thing is, no man is an island. By staying in bed the whole time without going out into the world and actually interacting with real people instead of sending a surrogate and interacting with other surrogates, we may end up losing touch with society, and that will be a disaster indeed.
Already, more and more people are so engrossed in computer games and the cyber world that they end up not knowing how to interact with real people. Interacting with people online and in a virtual reality world is simply not the same as actual interaction with people. Perhaps this is why there are so many oddballs around lately, since many people nowadays interact with machines more than actual human interaction.
When you are online, you can chat, play games, and have a war of the worlds with each other, you can even start conferencing with a group of people, but nothing beats the actual meeting up face to face with someone. The chatting over a meal or drink, the observation of actual human behaviour of another person or group of people - something you can never get just by interacting online.
So if humans are replaced by robots, what do you think will happen? People will lose their abilities to interact with others because they are so self-reliant on the machines. They will not be able to breathe outside, nor be as fit as before, nor go about their daily tasks like before. They will then become lazy, laid-back and totally inadequate.
Yes, surrogacy is a good idea since human abilities are limited. But however limited human abilities are, we still came up with high tech machines, virtual reality, cyber worlds, artificial intelligence. We invented the machines and robots. We are capable of all these without any help from any machines in the first place!
So who is to say we will not come up with better things? Now with the age of advanced technology, we are all dependent on machines. I will be lying if I say I do not depend on technology too. Shorn of the internet and laptop for a week and I will start going into cold turkey.
But we should not become so dependent on machines that we lost our natural ability to socialise and interact with others, that we allow machines to replace the way we live our lives. I do not know about others, but nothing gives me greater pleasure to go out and spend time with my friends and loved ones, to have my own children, to raise my kids, to go travelling. I want to be able to do all these personally and no machine or robot can ever replace that!
2 comments:
I agree with you, I prefer to do these things myself.
The primary advantage I find in using blogs and e-mail, is that I have more control over the time I interact with people. But, let's be honest, there are many times when it would be preferable to be able to ring someone up and actually go out with them rather than interact with them virtually.
My sentiments exactly! Trouble is online communication makes it so easy for everyone that a lot of people have slipped into a comfort zone. As a result, they prefer to interact online and start losing all social skills in interacting with others. Sad, but true.
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