A stray into identity and morality in the digital world.
(Which can’t be accessed on iphone or iPad – yet!)
Steph's E-learning and Digital Cultures site
part of the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh
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Interesting indeed. The self-construction of the digital entity as ‘kind to babies and old people’ or ‘guilty of a heinous crime’ probably does affect me, even if I know he hasn’t been either – I want to feel that he is interpretable. I’ll take my pre-existing patterns of culture ‘hinged’, thanks!
The moral obligation to maintain an identity might apply to the non-human as well as to the human in the network, if we think about the entities we interact with as being of increasingly ambiguous status (at least sometimes).
I like your audio experiment.
Thanks Jen and I think that I agree. I read that one of the phenomenons which can occur when we anthropomorphise ‘things’ is that we assign to them a recognisable level of human responsibility and morality. Perhaps this makes us feel more comfortable. And, as you say, the status of ‘things’ in the digital world is often blurry, so perhaps it’s better to be safe than sorry.
I saw the Honda robot being demoed a few years ago – I forget its name – and the stuff it had been programmed to do was either ‘cute’ (play football) or service-orientated (serve tea). Good news, everyone, the robots aren’t coming to get us!
Phew!