The personal technology device beat is among the most popular topics on the internet. From Wirecutter to the incomparable MKBHD — we all want to get a sense for the newest, hottest tech.
How Humans Interface with Technology
Technology is not just a radio, television, or cell phone. Technology is not a new concept. Written language can be considered a technology. In fact, the impact of the written word on oral cultures has been called an extinction level event for the societies that did not embrace the new technology, because oral cultures that didn’t adopt writing often became marginalized. The cultures that grew to dominate our modern world embraced this new technology. The power of the written word enhanced natural human abilities in storytelling and ultimately amplified our ability to learn across time.
While not embracing writing may have been a death sentence to a culture, it’s also true that writing is an even more powerful complement to oral language rather than something that should replace it.
In the amazing Exhalation, Ted Chiang, tells this story in “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”. Chiang contemplates that humans will move from only using human memory to computer memory. Moving forward in the development timeline, this means having a technology that can remember anything and everything that you ever did, wrote, and said. Through the power of the cloud, we will be able to recall the audio and video of those memories on command.
This isn’t a completely foreign concept in 2025. In fact, how such a technology might proliferate throughout our culture is something that could be seen as social media took hold during Web 2.0. All of a sudden moments that used to be privately shared among a family or friend group became public. Things people wrote, or pictures they took, years ago came back to haunt them. These things could be recalled instantly for noble or nefarious means.
Is this a good things? A bad thing? Well, what happened with that collapse of privacy through social media was both an increase in honesty, since there is no hiding from the iPhone camera or the Wayback Machine, but also an increase in cruelty. It’s two sides of the same technological coin. Honesty is fantastic. But, as we know, social media became a place where ruthlessness is pervasive. It’s even rewarded.
Human beings are powerful adapters. This type of super-human memory that Chiang contemplates, would undoubtedly be harnessed to augment existing human skills, just like the written word and countless technologies that have been invented and discovered since.
The Next Thing In Tech Hardware
So, what’s next? When there’s big shifts in technology, the devices we use tend to evolve. To facilitate the written word, there were devices like stone tools to write on a cave wall. Later it was the printing press.
Adding up all of the bleeding edge technologies of today, it seems an individually tailored super-human computer memory could be a reality sooner than later.
Earlier this fall, I was able to try the Meta Display glasses.1 When you put them on you quickly realize how the glasses form-factor is a perfect way for a computer intelligence to be able to see everything you see, everything you hear, everything you write, etc. In essence, to become your computer memory. You also realize how that last mile of product development is likely to be an uphill mile.2 There will be other well-capitalized companies taking their swing at this next evolution in hardware.
In the near future, OpenAI is likely to be one of those companies to make a splash in hardware after buying Jony Ive‘s company. Here’s the interesting thing. Unlike the Meta Display, it seems likely to be a device that is very close to what Chiang contemplated. Likely a piece of hardware that you carry around but has no screen. As anyone that has used the current generation VR and AR products, it’s the visual interface that is the hardest part of this next iteration of this type of technology.3 I am betting that Altman and Ive are thinking that such a device can see what you see, hear what you hear, and likely connect with your digital self to know what you read, write, and who you interact with in the digital world. No screen needed. In fact, the lack of a screen will be marketed as a selling point, and this type if device will be branded a the purest form of A.I. assistant to date.
Taken to its limit, it is exactly what Chiang wrote about in 2019 in “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”.
Navigating Technological Advances
In the final story in Chiang’s Exhalation — “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” — we see a technology that allows people to know precisely what would have happened had they taken that other job, married that other person, and so on.
Having a device like what OpenAI is likely to put out will essentially unlock a subset of this capability, but looking backward.
Human beings remember things imperfectly. Finding out what it feels like to teleport back to see or hear moments in our of lives is a powerful tool. Will the moment live up to the memory? It would not be surprising for this perfect computer memory to not only not live up to our human memory, but to illicit feelings of dread, anxiety, and sadness rather than the joy of the human memory, albeit imperfect.
When we remember perfectly, we risk losing the healing power of time, the ability to reinterpret with new perspective, forgive, and move on. Technology doesn’t just change what we can do, it changes how we think, and even who we are as a species.
Perfect memory could very well increase honesty. After all, how can you lie if we can rewind the tape? But it may reduce mercy at the same time.
The actual act of forgetting is inherent in many things we hold dear such as general interpersonal relationships and certainly in love. People aren’t perfect. Nor are our memories. There is beauty in that.
Just like the written word, and everything that has come since, ideally progress doesn’t negate what came before. It adds a new layer. It enhances parts of our humanity rather than replacing pieces of it.
As with all good science fiction, Chiang’s 2019 writing has really made me think about the future. Furthermore, he might have just flat out nailed it. We might be entering a truly exciting time in personal tech hardware for the first time since since 2007.