I was in awe when I read an article from CNET News online, dated April 2, 2007 that commented on an Australian website (link - http://www.mycybertwin.com/) providing software that would allow users to create and customize a virtual personality that is able to chat with others when the actual person is offline. My initial thought on this technology was a concern on why people would want to have other real chatters talk to their cybertwin instead of themselves. Even though you can tailor and customize your cybertwin to answer various questions based upon your personality, various FAQ’s that you can set up I still wondered on how effective this line of communication would be.
I also wondered whether the real person being chatted to would know that he/she was talking to a cybertwin. My personal opinion of communication is that you can’t really rehearse what to say to another person if the conversation sways one way or another. Cyberywins may be useful for answering FAQ and other static information but how can anyone use a cybertwin for say dating? Another benefit I thought was maybe, the user of the “MyCyberTwin” software may use this powerful tool to reach multiple websites (i.e. multiple people – e.g. for political campaigning). Even though I may try this software one day, I am still very skeptical that “MyCyberTwin” can fully represent me in an on-line conversation…..my conversations are way too dynamic for a computer software. On the other hand I may be willing to trust my robotwin if he can at least look and act like me.
I also wondered whether the real person being chatted to would know that he/she was talking to a cybertwin. My personal opinion of communication is that you can’t really rehearse what to say to another person if the conversation sways one way or another. Cyberywins may be useful for answering FAQ and other static information but how can anyone use a cybertwin for say dating? Another benefit I thought was maybe, the user of the “MyCyberTwin” software may use this powerful tool to reach multiple websites (i.e. multiple people – e.g. for political campaigning). Even though I may try this software one day, I am still very skeptical that “MyCyberTwin” can fully represent me in an on-line conversation…..my conversations are way too dynamic for a computer software. On the other hand I may be willing to trust my robotwin if he can at least look and act like me.
Links: http://mycybertwin.com/
3 comments:
Will, I must agree with you on the concept of having cybertwins it doesnt make too much sense that you would want to solicit information from people especially if it is a person you care not to talk to. On the other hand when people start dating for the first time you always meet their representative prior to meeting the actual person. What I mean by that is how many people have you met for the first time and will let you know all of their issues or for them to let you know all the issues that they dont like about you. Example: You are out on a date and if you are junky person you will not reveal that on the first date. If you know that there is a chance that they might come back to your house you will clean up probably more than usual to make sure everything is perfect. Maybe that is the goal of the cybertwin to make sure they put their best foot forward on the initial meeting. Also if that person gets nervous when first trying to get to know someone this initial solicitation of general knowledge may help them with the ice breaker. Think of the shy guy who goes out with his friends he may send his buddy to speak with a woman and ask her some general information about if she is seeing someone and then if not the other guy will introduce the two people.
I found the cyber-twin concept a bit disconcerting as well. I don't quite understand the practical application. Is the idea that once you get too tired to chat online with someone, you can call it a night while your cybertwin continues the conversation? And if the cybertwin is working off of a script or a description of your personality, what does that say about the quality of the so-called conversation? As you mentioned, this definitely seems like something that would appeal to politicians trying to reach young voters. But for most other purposes, the myriad options (texting, IM, email, etc.) available for indirect communication should at least require individuals to be conscious, active-participants in human interaction.
Will, now that I think about it, some people at my work could really use cybertwins in meetings because the types of standard responses that come out of their mouths. Really, some of the meetings give me DejaVu. I can't count how many times I have heard standard responses from managers like:
- "let's take that offline"
- "that's not within the scope of this project"
- "that's not in the budget"
- "that's a great point, would you like to head up this initiative?"
or even better, I think some of my previous manager could have used cybertwins at annual performance reviews because they always said the same thing year after year and it was a total farce! Other than that, I agree with you that this concept won't really work if you want to do anything more sophisticated with it.
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