Hi, y’all!
Just like last week a short holiday edition.
Triggered thought
One of the topics in the reflections on the Apple keynote dealt with the move to acceptance of the “boosted human”. I used this term some years ago in the context of new mobility, but we see it now getting normalized for audio and conversations and for adding the AI layer as possible next. See this “3 drivers for the next decade” from 2020 and “drivers for mobility” in 2018.
The hearing aid is positioned for people losing hearing capabilities by age, but this will easily be normalized as people loose qualities at a younger age. It is, of course, a bit cynical and techsolutionism to solve a problem that is created partly by the tech themselves, the in-ear headphones. But that aside.
The FDA approved the technology already, an important step.
Also the click-for-AI function of the button, is part of this. And is well aiming for social acceptance by leapfrogging earlier tech solutions by creating a smooth and above all compelling using experience. As Apple did so many times before, I don’t need to recall this here.
Of course, there might be a scenario in which this will not play out well, mainly if there is overpromise and underdelivery from the AI, as is not happening with early devices like Rabbit and Humane, but you can make the case that this is not for the AI but for the lacking device experience, which is the domain of Apple to solve, of course.
The narrative of the Vision Pro on how it can integrate a socially acceptable intervention of personal life, making pass-through believable might be part of it. It is cringe sometimes how it is presented, but it might tone down in the way we cannot foresee, and look back on in 5 years as unbelievable. We’ll see…
Let’s connect another announcement of last week by Google on how NotebookLM making conversations of all types of content, synthetic podcasts that makes us more easily understand complex information that makes it possible to access above par complex information. It is a form of boosted humans, and what is interesting to stress is how it is orienting AI in context of human. Sometimes, people wonder why humans are interfering with the AIs working much more efficiently without humans, but we need to keep in mind that the AI is only making sense if it is in the context of human interactions with humans and AI in the mix. We as humans make the A in AI. Otherwise it is just other intelligence.
Read the full (but shorter than usual) newsletter here.
Thanks for reading. I started blogging ideas and observations back in 2005 via Targetisnew.com. Since 2015, I have started a weekly update with links to the news and reflections. I always capture news on tech and societal impact from my perspective and interest. In the last few years, it has focused on the relationship between humans and tech, particularly AI, IoT, and robotics.
The notions from the news are distributed via the weekly newsletter, archived online here. Every week, I reflect more on one topic, a triggered thought. I share that thought here and redirect it to my newsletter for an overview of news, events, and more.
If you are a new reader and wondering who is writing, I am Iskander Smit. I am educated as an industrial designer and have worked in digital technology all my life. I am particularly interested in digital-physical interactions and a focus on human-tech intelligence co-performance. I like to (critically) explore the near future in the context of cities of things. And organising ThingsCon. I call Target_is_New my practice for making sense of unpredictable futures in human-AI partnerships. That is the lens I use to capture interesting news and share a paper every week.
Feel invited to reach out if you need some reflections; I might be able to help out!
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